Sam Shepard 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 fo...
Playwright, Actor, Author, Writer, Screenwriter, Film director, Television Director, Musician, Teacher, Voice Actor
Education
Duarte High School, Mt. San Antonio College
Nationality
United States of America
Spouse
O-Lan Jones (m. 1969–1984)
Children
Samuel Walker Shepard, Hannah Jane Shepard, Jesse Mojo Shepard
Parents
Samuel Shepard Rogers, Jr., Jane Elaine Schook
Siblings
Roxanne Rogers, Sandy Rogers
Partner
Jessica Lange
Nicknames
Samuel Shepard Rogers , Charlie , Samuel Shepard Rogers IV , Shepard, Sam , Steve Shepard , Samuel Shepard Rogers III
Awards
Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, Obie Award for Best New American Play, Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada, Obie Award for Direction, Obie Award for Playwriting, American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal ...
Nominations
Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Tony Award for Best Play, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, Virgin Atlantic Best New Play, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie, ...
Movies
Blackthorn, The Right Stuff, Days of Heaven, Black Hawk Down, August: Osage County, Mud, Don't Come Knocking, Paris, Texas, Cold in July, Thunderheart, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Notebook, Baby Boom, Midnight Special, Safe House, Out of the Furnace, The Pelican B...
TV Shows
Streets of Laredo, Bloodline
Star Sign
Scorpio
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Quote
1
[on Harry Dean Stanton] He is one of those actors who knows that his face is the story.
2
I didn't go out of my way to get into this movie stuff. I think of myself as a writer.
3
It's one of the great tragedies of our contemporary life in America, that families fall apart. Almost everybody has that in common.
4
You're still much more afraid of the audience, and yet, on the other hand, you desperately want to plunge into new territory. So every once in a while, the opportunity to make this leap gets handed to you. It's like jumping into cold water.
5
Hollywood is geared toward teenage idiocy.
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I'm not in demand. I'm all washed up.
7
There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.
8
Don't you find it kind of self-indulgent for actors to go around writing parts for themselves?
9
I was different on drugs - crystal Methedrine, which had more of an edge. When you walked down the street, your heels made sparks.
10
[on working in films] "It's all about narcissism. Terrence Malick called it 'sanctioned vanity'. Everything is attended to. Would you like some Perrier? Anything we can do? May we throw ourselves on the ground in front of you? This unbelievable barrage of indulgence".
11
"The people the critics write for aren't important to me. As far as I'm concerned, Broadway just doesn't exist." Quoted in the August, 1970 issue of Playboy (page 19).
12
Personality is everything that's false in a human, everything that's been added on to him and contrived.
13
Collaboration - that's the word producers use. That means, don't forget to kiss ass from beginning to end.
His play, "Simpatico" at the A Red Orchid Theater in Chicago, Illinois was nominated for a 2013 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award for Midsize Play Production.
3
His sister Sandy Rogers is a composer and a musician.
4
His sister Roxanne Rogers, a stage director, graduated in 1978 from Antioch.
Was a member of the rock band Holy Modal Rounders (1968-1971).
9
Plays drums and guitar.
10
Lived in England between 1971 and 1973.
11
He rodeo-ed in E.M. Fredric's hometown, Salinas, California. "Steinbeck" country.
12
Son of Jane Elaine (Schook) Rogers (b. 1917) and Samuel Shepard Rogers (died in 1984), both teachers.
13
He did the rodeo circuit, riding broncs and bulls.
14
Collaborated with Bob Dylan in writing the song "Brownsville Girl," which appeared on Dylan's 1986 album "Knocked Out Loaded." The eleven-minute song is considered by many to be a bright spot in what was otherwise a creative drought for Dylan from the late seventies to the early nineties.
15
By the time he was 30, he had already written 30 produced plays in New York.
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Born in Illinois and grew up in California.
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Has twice been nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as author of a Best Play nominee: in 1996 for "Buried Child" and in 2000 for "True West."
18
Lived with Jessica Lange and their children outside of Stillwater, Minnesota.
19
He wrote the 1971 play "Cowboy Mouth" with girlfriend Patti Smith and played in the very first production the role of Slim (with Smith in the role of Cavale). It is the only time he has played one of his own characters. Just before the second night's performance, Shepard was so disturbed about the experience of playing Slim, he abandoned the role without a word to anyone and left town. He has always had a fear of live audiences.
20
Was the drummer for late 1960s bands "Lothar and the Hand People" and "The Holy Modal Rounders" per a short interview in the August, 1970 issue of Playboy (the former confirmed by the interviewer, who was at the Astor Place Theater in NYC to see a twin-bill of the then-26-year-old Shepard's plays, "The Unseen Hand" and "Forensic and the Navigators") and encountered Shepard drumming away in the lobby with Lothar et al.
21
Has a son named Jesse Mojo Shepard (May 1970) from his marriage to O-Lan Jones and two children, Hannah Jane Shepard (January 13, 1986) and Samuel Walker Shepard (June 14, 1987), from his longtime relationship with Jessica Lange.
Won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play "Buried Child" and was nominated for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play "True West" and the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play "Fool for Love".
$8 Million
