
Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned half a century. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for portraying 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 Shepard as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." Shepard's plays are known for their bleak, poetic, surrealist elements, black comedy, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society. His style evolved from the absurdism of his early off-off-Broadway work to the realism of later plays like Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class.

Great Performances
TV • 1971

Felon
MOVIE • 2008

Defenseless
MOVIE • 1991

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
TV • 1968

The Notebook
MOVIE • 2004

Bloodline
TV • 2015

Black Hawk Down
MOVIE • 2001

Brothers
MOVIE • 2009

Klondike
TV • 2014

Streets of Laredo
TV • 1995

Mud
MOVIE • 2013

Swordfish
MOVIE • 2001

Safe House
MOVIE • 2012

Steel Magnolias
MOVIE • 1989

The Pledge
MOVIE • 2001

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
MOVIE • 2007

Stealth
MOVIE • 2005

The Accidental Husband
MOVIE • 2008