Sam Shepard

Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, director and screenwriter whose career spanned half a century. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child (which was nominated for five Tony Awards) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film The Right Stuff. He received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. New York magazine described him as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. As an actor, his best known roles are as Calvin Meyer in Midnight Special, Robert Rayburn on Netflix's series Bloodline, Beverly Weston in August: Osage County, Harlan Whitford in Safe House, Hank Cahill in Brothers, Frank James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, George Cummings in Stealth, Frank Calhoun in The Notebook, Master General William F. Garrison in Black Hawk Down, J.C. Franklin in All the Pretty Horses, Thomas Callahan in The Pelican Brief, Frank Coutelle in Thunderheart, Spud Jones in Steel Magnolias, Dr. Jeff Cooper in Baby Boom, Doc Porter in Crimes of the Heart, and Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. Over the years, he taught extensively on playwriting and other aspects of theater. He gave classes and seminars at various theater workshops, festivals, and universities. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986. From 1969 to 1984, he was married to actress O-Lan Jones, with whom he had one son, Jesse Mojo Shepard (born 1970). From 1970 to 1971, he was involved in an extramarital affair with musician Patti Smith. Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote two songs about her affairs with him during Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975. In "Coyote", from her eighth studio album Hejira, she recounts his seduction of her at a period while he was both married and having an extramarital affair with tour manager Christine O'Dell with the lines: "He's got a woman at home, another woman down the hall, but he seems to want me anyway." He met actress Jessica Lange on the set of the 1982 film Frances, in which they both acted. He moved in with her in 1983, and they were together for 27 years; they separated in 2009. They had two children, Hannah Jane Shepard (born 1986) and Samuel Walker Shepard (born 1987). In 2014 and 2015, he dated actress Mia Kirshner. His 50-year friendship with Johnny Dark, stepfather to O-Lan Jones, was the subject of the 2013 documentary Shepard & Dark by Treva Wurmfeld. A collection of Shepard and Dark's correspondence, Two Prospectors, was also published that year. He died on July 27, 2017, at his home in Midway, KY, aged 73, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Known For	Acting
Most Rating	0.043
Birthday	1943-11-05
Place of Birth	Fort Sheridan, Illinois, USA
Also Known As	Samuel Shepard Rogers, Сем Шепард, سم شپارد, سام شپارد,

Black Hawk Down

Voyager

Stealth

The Return

Frances

Don't Come Knocking

Bandidas

Hamlet

Steel Magnolias

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The Notebook

Baby Boom

The Pledge

Patti Smith: Dream of Life

Leo

Purgatory

Blind Horizon

Swordfish

Thunderheart

The Right Stuff

Inhale

The Pelican Brief

Felon

Charlotte's Web

The Accidental Husband

Country

Defenseless

Days of Heaven

Killing Them Softly

Crimes of the Heart

Curtain Call

Safe Passage

Blackthorn

Fool for Love

All the Pretty Horses

Kurosawa

Safe House

Raggedy Man

Bright Angel

Darling Companion

Resurrection

Mud

Shot in the Heart

After the Harvest

August: Osage County

Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction

Ruffian

Out of the Furnace

Dash and Lilly

Savannah

Lily Dale

Rosy-Fingered Dawn: A Film on Terrence Malick

Cold in July

The Only Thrill

Brothers

Shepard & Dark

Renaldo and Clara

The Good Old Boys

Never Here

Ithaca

Midnight Special

One Kill

Snow Falling on Cedars

The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose

Trudell

Made in the USA

In Dubious Battle

Walker Payne

Brand X

This So-Called Disaster

California Typewriter

MaMa's Pushcart

Dear Antonioni

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

Fair Game