am Shepard death anniversary

9 years ago today, on July 27, 2017,Sam Shepard death anniversary, American theater lost one of its most defining voices. Sam Shepard died at his farm in Midway, Kentucky, at 73, after a long battle with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Shepard was born Samuel Shepard Rogers III in November 1943 at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, the son of an Army pilot and a teacher. The family moved often before eventually settling on an avocado farm in Duarte, California, a setting that would later echo through some of his most personal plays. He started out writing poetry and short plays in the 1960s, right as experimental theater was tearing up the old rules of American drama, and by the time he was 30 he’d already had roughly 30 productions staged in New York.

His breakthrough came in 1979, when “Buried Child” won him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, a story about a family’s buried secrets that captured the kind of quiet American darkness he’d spend his whole career exploring. He was nominated for two more Pulitzers after that, for “True West” and “Fool for Love,” and by his forties he’d become the second most widely performed American playwright alive, behind only Tennessee Williams.

Theater was only half the story. Shepard also built a substantial film career, almost by accident according to people who knew him, since he reportedly never felt entirely comfortable with the Hollywood side of fame. His breakout film role came in 1983, playing test pilot Chuck Yeager in “The Right Stuff,” a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to appear in “Steel Magnolias,” “Black Hawk Down,” “The Pelican Brief,” and “August: Osage County,” along with a recurring role on Netflix’s “Bloodline” that wrapped just months before his death.

His personal life drew almost as much attention as his work. Shepard met actress Jessica Lange on the set of 1982’s “Frances,” and the two became partners for nearly three decades, having two children together before quietly separating in 2009. He’d been married once before, to actress O-Lan Jones, with whom he had his eldest son. Beyond acting and writing, Shepard had also spent part of the 1960s drumming in an eccentric folk band called the Holy Modal Rounders and once co-wrote the song “Brownsville Girl” with Bob Dylan.

Tributes poured in from across the entertainment world within hours of his death. Game of Thrones actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau called him a hero of writing, acting, and theater all at once. House of Cards creator Beau Willimon described his eyes as having seen so much, writing about it with fearless, timeless honesty.

By the time he died, Shepard had written 58 plays and several books of essays, short stories, and memoirs across a career spanning more than half a century. Nine years later, “Buried Child” and “True West” are still staged regularly in theaters across the country, still teaching new audiences the particular brand of quiet American unease that Shepard spent his whole life writing about. So keep reading more daily details …

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