Sam Shepard (born Samuel Shepard Rogers III; November 5, 1943) is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child. Shepard was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983). Shepard received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009.

Biography

When Shepard first arrived in New York, he roomed with Charlie Mingus Jr., a friend from his high school days and the son of jazz musician Charles Mingus. Then he lived with actress Joyce Aaron. From 1969 to 1984, he was married to actress O-Lan Jones, with whom he has one son, Jesse Mojo Shepard (born 1970). In 1970-71, Shepard was involved in an extramarital affair with Patti Smith, who remained unaware of Shepard's identity as a multiple Obie Award-winning playwright until it was finally divulged to her by Jackie Curtis. According to Smith, "Me and his wife still even liked each other. I mean, it wasn't like committing adultery in the suburbs or something." Shepard met Academy-Award-winning actress Jessica Lange on the set of the film Frances, in which they were both acting. He moved in with her in 1983, and they were together for nearly 30 years; they separated in 2010. They have two children, Hannah Jane (born 1985) and Samuel Walker Shepard (born 1987). In 2003, Jesse Shepard wrote a book of short stories that was published in San Francisco, and his father appeared together with him at a reading to introduce the book.

Shepard played the legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, and despite having a longstanding aversion to flying, he allowed the real Chuck Yeager to take him up in a jet plane in 1982, when preparing for the role. Shepard described his flying phobia as a source for a character in his 1966 play, Icarus's Mother. He went through an airliner crash in the film Voyager (1991), and according to one account, he vowed never to fly again after a very rocky trip on an airliner coming back from Mexico in the 1960s.

In the early morning hours of January 3, 2009, Shepard was arrested and charged with speeding and drunken driving in Normal, Illinois. He pleaded guilty to both charges on February 11, 2009 and was sentenced to 24 months probation, alcohol education classes, and 100 hours of community service.

On May 25, 2015 Shepard was arrested in Santa Fe, New Mexico for aggravated drunk driving.

His 50-year friendship with Johnny Dark was the subject of the 2013 documentary, Shepard & Dark, by Treva Wurmfeld. A collection of Shepard and Dark's correspondence, Two Prospectors (ISBN 978-0-292-73582-8), was also published that year.




Archives
The Sam Shepard papers at the Wittliff collections of Southwestern Writers, Texas State University, were donated by the author and comprise some 26 boxes of material. The University of Texas Libraries purchased a separate collection of his papers in 2006.


Bibliography





1964: Cowboys
1964: The Rock Garden
1965: Chicago
1965: Icarus's Mother
1965: 4-H Club
1966: Red Cross
1967: La Turista
1967: Cowboys #2
1967: Forensic & the Navigators
1969: The Unseen Hand
1969: Oh! Calcutta!
1970: The Holy Ghostly
1970: Operation Sidewinder
1971: Mad Dog Blues
1971: Back Bog Beast Bait
1971: Cowboy Mouth
1972: The Tooth of Crime
1974: Geography of a Horse Dreamer




1975: Action
1976: Angel City
1976: Suicide in B Flat
1977: Inacoma
1978: Curse of the Starving Class
1978: Buried Child
1978: Tongues
1980: True West
1981: Savage Love
1983: Fool for Love
1985: A Lie of the Mind
1987: A Short Life of Trouble
1987: Baby Boom
1991: States of Shock
1993: Simpatico
1998: Eyes for Consuela
2000: The Late Henry Moss
2004: The God of Hell
2007: Kicking a Dead Horse
2009: Ages of the Moon



Collections
1973: Hawk Moon, PAJ Books; ISBN 0-933826-23-0
1983: Motel Chronicles, City Lights; ISBN 0-87286-143-0
1984: Seven Plays, Dial Press, 368 pages; ISBN 0-553-34611-3
1984: Fool for Love and Other Plays, Bantam, 320 pages; ISBN 0-553-34590-7
1996: The Unseen Hand: and Other Plays, Vintage, 400 pages; ISBN 0-679-76789-4
1996: Cruising Paradise, Vintage, 255 pages; ISBN 0-679-74217-4
2003: Great Dream of Heaven, Vintage, 160 pages; ISBN 0-375-70452-3
2004: Rolling Thunder Logbook, Da Capo, 176 pages, reissue; ISBN 0-306-81371-8
2004: Day out of Days: Stories, Knopf, 304 pages; ISBN 978-0-307-26540-1
Filmography

Awards and nominations

See also

List of playwrights from the United States
List of members of the AAALDL
References


Further reading
Espartaco Carlos Eduardo Sanguinetti: The Experience of Limits, p. 96 (Ediciones de Arte Gaglianone, first published 1989) ISBN 950-9004-98-7
Radavich, David. "Back to the (Plutonian) Midwest: Sam Shepard's The God of Hell." New England Theatre Journal 18 (2007): 95-108.
Radavich, David. "Rabe, Mamet, Shepard, and Wilson: Mid-American Male Dramatists of the 1970s and '80s." The Midwest Quarterly XLVIII: 3 (Spring 2007): 342-58.
Shewey, Don (1997). Sam Shepard. Da Capo Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press). p. 269. ISBN 978-0-306-80770-1.
External links

Official website
Sam Shepard at Bucknell University
CLIParser at the Internet Movie Database
CLIParser at the Internet Broadway Database
CLIParser at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
Works by or about CLIParser in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Carol Benet collection of Sam Shepard research materials, 1970-1995, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Benjamin Ryder Howe, Jeanne McCulloch, Mona Simpson (Spring 1997). "Sam Shepard, The Art of Theater No. 12". The Paris Review (142).
video clips gathered by Mashpedia.
vteSam Shepard
Filmography
Awards
Plays
Icarus's Mother
La Turista
Oh! Calcutta!
Cowboy Mouth
The Tooth of Crime
Geography of a Horse Dreamer
Action
Angel City
Suicide in B Flat
Curse of the Starving Class
Buried Child
Tongues
True West
Fool for Love
A Lie of the Mind
Simpatico
The God of Hell
Kicking a Dead Horse
Scripts
Me and My Brother
Zabriskie Point
Renaldo and Clara
Paris, Texas
Far North
Silent Tongue
Don't Come Knocking
See also
Family Trilogy
Jessica Lange

16x16px Book

vtePulitzer Prize for Drama (1976–2000)
Michael Bennett, Nicholas Dante, James Kirkwood, Jr., Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban (1976)
Michael Cristofer (1977)
Donald L. Coburn (1978)
Sam Shepard (1979)
Lanford Wilson (1980)
Beth Henley (1981)
Charles Fuller (1982)
Marsha Norman (1983)
David Mamet (1984)
James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim (1985)
August Wilson (1987)
Alfred Uhry (1988)
Wendy Wasserstein (1989)
August Wilson (1990)
Neil Simon (1991)
Robert Schenkkan (1992)
Tony Kushner (1993)
Edward Albee (1994)
Horton Foote (1995)
Jonathan Larson (1996)
Paula Vogel (1998)
Margaret Edson (1999)
Donald Margulies (2000)

Complete list
(1918–1925)
(1926–1950)
(1951–1975)
(1976–2000)

Best films