Sam Shepard
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.
Acting (75 movies)
Black Hawk Down
2001
Voyager
1991
Stealth
2005
The Return
2006
Frances
1982
Don't Come Knocking
2005
Bandidas
2006
Hamlet
2000
Steel Magnolias
1989
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
2007
The Notebook
2004
Baby Boom
1987
The Pledge
2001
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
2008
Leo
2002
Purgatory
1999
Blind Horizon
2003
Swordfish
2001
Thunderheart
1992
The Right Stuff
1983
Inhale
2010
The Pelican Brief
1993
Felon
2008
Charlotte's Web
2006
The Accidental Husband
2008
Country
1984
Defenseless
1991
Days of Heaven
1978
Killing Them Softly
2012
Crimes of the Heart
1986
Curtain Call
1998
Safe Passage
1994
Blackthorn
2011
Fool for Love
1985
All the Pretty Horses
2000
Kurosawa
2000
Safe House
2012
Raggedy Man
1981
Bright Angel
1990
Darling Companion
2012
Resurrection
1980
Mud
2013
Shot in the Heart
2001
After the Harvest
2001
August: Osage County
2013
Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction
2013
Ruffian
2007
Out of the Furnace
2013
Dash and Lilly
1999
Savannah
2013
Lily Dale
1996
Rosy-Fingered Dawn: A Film on Terrence Malick
2002
Cold in July
2014
The Only Thrill
1997
Brothers
2009
Shepard & Dark
2012
Renaldo and Clara
1978
The Good Old Boys
1995
Never Here
2017
Ithaca
2015
Midnight Special
2016
One Kill
2000
Snow Falling on Cedars
1999
The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose
2007
Trudell
2005
Made in the USA
1993
In Dubious Battle
2016
Walker Payne
2006
Brand X
1970
This So-Called Disaster
2003
California Typewriter
2017
MaMa's Pushcart
1988
Dear Antonioni
1995
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
2019
Fair Game
2010
Directing (2 movies)
| Title | Year | Job |
|---|---|---|
| Me and My Brother | 1969 | Writer |
| Zabriskie Point | 1970 | Screenplay |
| Oh! Calcutta! | 1972 | Writer |
| Renaldo and Clara | 1978 | Writer |
| Savage/Love | 1981 | Writer |
| Tongues | 1982 | Writer |
| True West | 1984 | Writer |
| Paris, Texas | 1984 | Writer |
| Fool for Love | 1985 | Screenplay |
| Far North | 1988 | Writer |
| Silent Tongue | 1993 | Writer |
| Curse of the Starving Class | 1994 | Writer |
| True West | 2002 | Writer |
| See You in My Dreams | 2004 | Writer |
| Don't Come Knocking | 2005 | Writer |
| True West | 2016 | Writer |
| Buried Child | 2016 | Writer |