Sam Shepard
(Thomas Callahan)

Tall and lanky, with weathered good looks, Sam Shepard emerged in the '60s and early '70s as a highly regarded American dramatist, creating plays like True West, which reworked the mythology of the American West. In 1979 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Buried Child. He was one of the writers on Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970) and later won critical notice for his original screenplay for director Wim Wenders' American odyssey Paris, Texas (1984), starring Harry Dean Stanton. Film writer Leonard Maltin commented that "...while his rugged good looks, sinewy frame, and pleasant drawl seem to make this actor an all-American hero in the Gary Cooper mold, Shepard's background renders him something more than that."

As an actor, Shepard made his film debut in Bob Dylan's self-directed Renaldo and Clara (1978), then turned heads with a series of offbeat pictures, including Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), Resurrection (1980), Raggedy Man (1981), Frances (1982) (his first with longtime off-screen partner Jessica Lange), and especially The Right Stuff (1983), for which he earned an Oscar® nomination playing test pilot Chuck Yeager. He re-teamed with Lange in Country (1984) and Crimes of the Heart (1986), and played the lead in Robert Altman's adaptation of Shepard's own play Fool for Love (1985). Shepard's brand of American authenticity translated well in the box-office smashes Steel Magnolias (1989) and as the boozing self-destructive law professor (and Julia Roberts' lover) in The Pelican Brief (1993).

Shepard made his directorial debut with his own script for the elliptical drama Far North (1988), starring Lange, and then tackled the Western Silent Tongue (1994), featuring Alan Bates and the late River Phoenix. Previously married to the actress O-Lan Jones, Shepard has been romantically involved with Jessica Lange since they co-starred together in Frances. Recent projects have included Black Hawk Down (2001), Swordfish (2001) and The Pledge (2001).