Sam Shepard
Known For
Acting
Born
1943-11-05 in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, USA
Died
2017-07-27
Biography
Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned half a century. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for portraying 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 Shepard as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." Shepard's plays are known for their bleak, poetic, surrealist elements, black comedy, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society. His style evolved from the absurdism of his early off-off-Broadway work to the realism of later plays like Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class.
Most Known For
Great Performances
as Self
The Notebook
as Frank Calhoun
Bloodline
as Robert Rayburn
Brothers
as Hank Cahill
Black Hawk Down
as MG William F. Garrison
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
as Self (uncredited)
Never Here
as Paul Stark
Mud
as Tom
Steel Magnolias
as Spud Jones
Thunderheart
as Frank Coutelle
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
as Frank James
Safe House
as Harlan Whitford
Swordfish
as Senator Reisman
Trudell
as Self - Playwright, Actor (Thunderheart)
Charlotte's Web
as Narrator (voice)
The Right Stuff
as Chuck Yeager
Days of Heaven
as The Farmer
Darling Companion
as Sheriff Morris
Stealth
as George Cummings
The Pledge
as Eric Pollack