Actor and Playwright Sam Shepard Dead at 73

Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-nominated actor, died Sunday at the age of 73. The winner of 13 Obie Awards, Shepard won his first six for plays he penned between 1966 and 1968. After his success on the off-Broadway stage, Shepard segued to screenwriting with credits on films like Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriske Point before turning to acting. Besides his Oscar-nominated turn as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, Shepard also acted in Mud, Black Hawk Down, The Notebook, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, August: Osage County. Shepard suffered from ALS and was 73.

From The New York Times:

“Sam Shepard, whose hallucinatory plays redefined the landscape of the American West and its inhabitants, died on Thursday at his home in Kentucky of complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, a spokesman for the Shepard family announced on Monday. He was 73. Possessed of a stoically handsome face and a rangy frame, Mr. Shepard became a familiar presence as an actor in films that included “Days of Heaven” (1978), “The Right Stuff” (1983) and “Baby Boom” (1987). He bore a passing resemblance to that laconic idol of Hollywood’s golden era, Gary Cooper, and in an earlier age, Mr. Shepard could have made a career as a leading man of Westerns……”

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