Sam Shepard

Known for Acting

Sam Shepard's portrait

Details

Birthday: November 05, 1943

Deathday: July 27, 2017

Place of birth: Fort Sheridan, Illinois, USA

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.

Actor

2017

2015

2013

Mud

2013

2012

2011

2010

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2006

2005

2005

2002

Leo

2001

2001

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1999

1996

1991

1987

1984

1982

1970

Director