Actor, author, playwright Sam Shepard dies
Pulitzer winner, Oscar and Emmy nominee, he did it all
Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of plays, screenplays, stories and memoirs, whose rugged good looks and laconic style made for a memorable screen presence as an actor, has died. He was 73.
He died at his home in Kentucky on Thursday from complications of ALS, or Lou Gehrig ’s disease, according to a statement issued by family spokesman Chris Boneau.
It had not been previously disclosed that Shepard suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Shepard was a rarity: an awardwinning stage dramatist and a movie star, screenwriter and director.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1979 for Buried Child, which launched his career as a playwright. Later, he was nominated for other drama Pulitzers: in 1983 for True West and in 1984 for Fool for Love.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in 1983’s The Right
Stuff, a role that seemed to embody Shepard’s own laconic personality.
The author of nearly 50 plays, according to his website, Shepard’s work established him in the canon of American theater.
His personal life also contributed to his fame: From 1969 to 1984, he was married to O-Lan Jones, with whom he has a son.
Shepard met two-time Oscar winner Jessica Lange on the set of the 1982 film Frances. He moved in with her in 1983, and they were together for nearly 30 years; they separated in 2009. They have two children.
Shepard’s last movie, according to IMDb, is Never Here, a psychological thriller starring Mireille Enos that premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June. It’s due for release later this year, according to Deadline.
Shepard’s most recent TV work was in the Netflix show Bloodline.
His most recent book, published in February, is The One In
side, touted by publisher Alfred Knopf as a work of fiction and a “tour de force of memory, mystery, death, and life.” The book is about a man looking back on his life and taking in what has been lost, including control over his own body as the symptoms of ALS advance, according to the Associated Press.
Born Samuel Shepard Rogers IV in Fort Sheridan, Ill., Shepard grew up on military bases in a dysfunctional family, which provided grist for recurrent dark themes in his writing.
After settling in Duarte, Calif., Shepard began acting and writing in high school. In 1962, a touring theater company visited town and he joined up. Eventually, he moved to New York, where he began writing plays, later gaining recognition and winning prestigious OBIE awards.
Shepard got his first lead role in a movie in Terrence Malick’s
Days of Heaven in 1978. Eventually, he had more than 60 movie credits, according to IMDb.