A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Alias:
Samuel Shepard Rogers
Сем Шепард
Birthplace:
Fort Sheridan, Illinois, USA
Born:
November 5, 1943
Died:
July 27, 2017
Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, director and screenwriter whose career spanned half a century. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child (which was nominated for five Tony Awards) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of 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 him as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. As an actor, his best known roles are as Calvin Meyer in Midnight Special, Robert Rayburn on Netflix's series Bloodline, Beverly Weston in August: Osage County, Harlan Whitford in Safe House, Hank Cahill in Brothers, Frank James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, George Cummings in Stealth, Frank Calhoun in The Notebook, Master General William F. Garrison in Black Hawk Down, J.C. Franklin in All the Pretty Horses, Thomas Callahan in The Pelican Brief, Frank Coutelle in Thunderheart, Spud Jones in Steel Magnolias, Dr. Jeff Cooper in Baby Boom, Doc Porter in Crimes of the Heart, and Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. Over the years, he taught extensively on playwriting and other aspects of theater. He gave classes and seminars at various theater workshops, festivals, and universities. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986. From 1969 to 1984, he was married to actress O-Lan Jones, with whom he had one son, Jesse Mojo Shepard (born 1970). From 1970 to 1971, he was involved in an extramarital affair with musician Patti Smith. Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote two songs about her affairs with him during Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975. In "Coyote", from her eighth studio album Hejira, she recounts his seduction of her at a period while he was both married and having an extramarital affair with tour manager Christine O'Dell with the lines: "He's got a woman at home, another woman down the hall, but he seems to want me anyway." He met actress Jessica Lange on the set of the 1982 film Frances, in which they both acted. He moved in with her in 1983, and they were together for 27 years; they separated in 2009. They had two children, Hannah Jane Shepard (born 1986) and Samuel Walker Shepard (born 1987). In 2014 and 2015, he dated actress Mia Kirshner. His 50-year friendship with Johnny Dark, stepfather to O-Lan Jones, was the subject of the 2013 documentary Shepard & Dark by Treva Wurmfeld. A collection of Shepard and Dark's correspondence, Two Prospectors, was also published that year. He died on July 27, 2017, at his home in Midway, KY, aged 73, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Acting Double:
2013 The Assassination of President Kennedy
Director:
1988 Far North
1993 Silent Tongue
2013 The Assassination of President Kennedy
In Memory Of:
1988 Far North
1993 Silent Tongue
2013 The Assassination of President Kennedy
2020 Tesla
Music:
1982 Tongues
1988 Far North
1993 Silent Tongue
2013 The Assassination of President Kennedy
2020 Tesla
Screenplay:
1970 Zabriskie Point
1982 Tongues
1985 Fool for Love
1988 Far North
1993 Silent Tongue
2013 The Assassination of President Kennedy
2020 Tesla
Short Story:
1970 Zabriskie Point
1982 Tongues
1985 Fool for Love
1988 Far North
1993 Silent Tongue
2004 See You in My Dreams
2013 The Assassination of President Kennedy
2020 Tesla
Theatre Play:
1970 Zabriskie Point
1982 Tongues
1985 Fool for Love
1988 Far North
1993 Silent Tongue
1999 Simpatico
2004 See You in My Dreams
2013 The Assassination of President Kennedy
2020 Tesla
Writer:
1969 Me and My Brother
1970 Zabriskie Point
1972 Oh! Calcutta!
1978 Renaldo and Clara
1981 Savage/Love
1982 Tongues
1984 Paris, Texas
1984 True West
1985 Fool for Love
1988 Far North
1993 Silent Tongue
1994 Curse of the Starving Class
1999 Simpatico
2002 True West
2004 See You in My Dreams
2005 Don't Come Knocking
2013 The Assassination of President Kennedy
2016 Buried Child
2016 True West
2020 Tesla
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.