Sam Shepard, Pulitzer Winning Playwright And Actor, Passes At Age 73

Sam Shepard, a man of many talents that included acting, writing and directing, died on July 27 at his Kentucky home. Shepard, age 73, had been suffering from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

His acting career stretched from 1978, where he was featured in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, to 2017 with the film Never Here, which had a limited release this past June. With nearly 40 years in front of the camera, Shepard was only nominated for a single Academy Award. The film was 1983’s The Right Stuff and he received a Best Supporting Actor nod for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager.

Beyond his work in film, where he directed two features (Far North and Silent Tongue) and wrote screenplays for Paris, Texas and Zabriske Point among others, Shepard was also an award-winning playwright. The author of forty-four plays, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child. The play had a short revival last year and it starred Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Taissa Farmiga, and Nat Wolff.