Mr. Shepard wrote more than 55 plays (his last, “A Particle of Dread,” had its premiere in 2014), acted in more than 50 films and had more than a dozen roles on television. He was also the author of several prose works, including “Cruising Paradise” (1996), and the memoir “Motel Chronicles” (1982). Though he received critical acclaim almost from the beginning of his career, and his work has been staged throughout the world, he was never a mainstream commercial playwright. 
 
 Several writers who grew up studying Mr. Shepard’s works said that they were struck by his boldness. Christopher Shinn, whose plays include the Pulitzer finalist “Dying City,” said he was reminded of Mr. Shepard’s gifts as a writer while watching “Buried Child” Off Broadway last year. 
 
 “I felt the play pulsing with Sam Shepard’s unconscious, and I realized how rarely I feel that in the theater today,” Mr. Shinn said on Monday. “Sam always wrote from that place — a zone of trauma, mystery and grief. Whether the play was more mainstream or experimental in its conception, he took the big risk every time.” 
 
 In the relatively naturalistic “True West,” two brothers of opposite temperaments find themselves assuming the personality of the other. (John Malkovich and Gary Sinise made their names in the Steppenwolf Theater Company production; Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly memorably traded off the parts in the 2000 Broadway revival.) Roles within families depicted onstage continually shift and dissolve, as in Mr. Shepard’s great “A Lie of the Mind” (1985), the title of which might serve for every play he wrote. 
 
 As for love between a man and a woman, Mr. Shepard, whose long relationship with the actress Jessica Lange cast an unwanted spotlight on his private life, described that as “terrible and impossible.” He later explained: “It’s impossible the way people enter into it feeling they’re going to be saved by the other one. And it seems like many, many times that quicksand happens in a relationship when you feel that somehow you can be saved.” 
 
 That point of view received its fullest and most rousingly theatrical incarnation in “Fool for Love,” a portrait of possibly incestuous bedmates who spend their lives running away from and toward each other as fast as they can. The play received its first Broadway production only two years ago, starring a ferocious Sam Rockwell and Nina Arianda, in roles embodied three decades earlier by Ed Harris and Kathy Baker. 
 
 “I loved Sam,” Mr. Harris said in a statement on Monday. “He has been a huge part of my life, who I am, and he will remain so.” ||||| Sam Shepard, known for his acting work in films such as Black Hawk Down and The Right Stuff, has died. He was 73. 
 
 Shepard’s theater representative confirms to PEOPLE that Shepard passed away at his home in Kentucky on Thursday, July 27, from complications from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The actor’s battle with ALS was not publicly known. He was with his family at the time of his death. 
 
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 “The family requests privacy at this difficult time,” said Chris Boneau, the family’s spokesman. 
 
 The representative said funeral arrangements would remain private. Plans for a public memorial have not yet been determined. 
 
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 Shepard made his acting debut in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven in 1978 and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in 1983’s The Right Stuff. 
 
 Despite his success, he was known for shying away from the spotlight of Hollywood. 
 
 “I had all kinds of wild offers at that time to be a movie star and I panicked,” he later told The Guardian. “I was turning down things like Warren Beatty’s Reds, that part of Eugene O’Neill [played by Jack Nicholson]. My agent was going crazy. I hadn’t realized what the experience of it would be like – to be on the verge of being a movie star. Because it’s like you are the hottest whore in town. Everybody wants you.” 
 
 More recently, he is known for playing Noah (Ryan Gosling)’s father in The Notebook. He was also in the recent adaptation of August: Osage County alongside Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. In 2015, he appeared in Netflix’s dark family drama Bloodline. 
 
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 He wrote several films as well, including Paris, Texas, Fool for Love and Simpatico. 
 
 Shepard was also an author, director and playwright. He has written over 40 plays and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child. 
 
 Shepard is survived by his two sisters, Sandy and Roxanne Rogers, and his three children: Jesse Mojo, 47, from his marriage to O-Lan Jones, as well as Hannah Jane, 31, and Samuel Walker, 30, from his longtime relationship with Jessica Lange. 
 
 Jamie McCarthy/WireImage 
 
 Lange spoke about her partner from 1982 to 2009 in the August/September issue of AARP The Magazine. 
 
 “I wouldn’t call Sammy easygoing and funny, but everybody has their dark side, and he always does it with a sense of humor.” ||||| BroadwayWorld has just learned that playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director Sam Shepard has passed away. Shepard, who had been ill with ALS for some time, died peacefully on July 27 at his home in Kentucky, surrounded by his children and sisters. He was 73 years old. 
 
 Survivors include his children, Jesse, Hannah and Walker Shepard, and his sisters, Sandy and Roxanne Rogers. 
 
 "The family requests privacy at this difficult time," said the spokesman for the family, Chris Boneau. 
 
 Funeral arrangements remain private. Plans for a public memorial have not yet been determined. 
 
 Shepard is the author of forty-four plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. 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 his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983). 
 
 Shepard received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. New York described him as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." 
 
 His many plays include: Cowboys, The Rock Garden, Chicago, Icarus's Mother, 4-H Club, Red Cross, La Turista, Cowboys #2, Forensic & the Navigators, The Unseen Hand, Oh! Calcutta! (contributed sketches), The Holy Ghostly, Operation Sidewinder, Mad Dog Blues, Back Bog Beast Bait, Cowboy Mouth, The Tooth of Crime, Geography of a Horse Dreamer, Action, Angel City, Suicide in B Flat, Inacoma, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, Tongues, True West, Savage/Love, Fool for Love, A Lie of the Mind, A Short Life of Trouble, Baby Boom, States of Shock, Simpatico, Tooth of Crime, Eyes for Consuela, The Late Henry Moss, The God of Hell, Kicking a Dead Horse, Ages of the Moon, Heartless and A Particle of Dread. 
 
 Shepard's plays are chiefly known for their bleak, poetic, often surrealist elements, black humor and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society. His style has evolved over the years, from the absurdism of his early Off-Off-Broadway work to the realism of Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class (both 1978). 
 
 Shepard began his acting career in earnest when he was cast as the handsome land baron in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), opposite Richard Gere and Brooke Adams. This led to other important film roles, including that of Cal, Ellen Burstyn's love interest, in the film "Resurrection" (1980), and most notably his portrayal of Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983). The latter performance earned Shepard an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. By 1986, his play Fool for Love was getting a film adaptation directed by Robert Altman, in which Shepard played the lead role; his play A Lie of the Mind was being performed Off-Broadway with an all-star cast (including Harvey Keitel and Geraldine Page); and Shepard was subsequently working steadily as a film actor - all of these achievements put him on the cover of Newsweek. 
 
 Throughout the years, Shepard has done a considerable amount of teaching on writing plays and other aspects of theatre. His classes and seminars have occurred at various theatre workshops, festivals, and universities. Shepard was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986. 
 
 Photo Credit: Gregory Costanzo 
 
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– Acclaimed actor and playwright Sam Shepard is dead at age 73, reports BroadwayWorld. Shepard, who died at home in Kentucky, had been suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. He leaves behind an impressive legacy in the arts as the author of more than 40 plays, including Buried Child, for which he won the Pulitzer in 1979. Shepard also earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in 1983's The Right Stuff. Most recently, he had portrayed the family patriarch in the Netflix series Bloodline. The New York Times calls Shepard "one of the most original voices of his generation," noting other plays such as Curse of the Starving Class, True West, and Fool for Love. As BroadwayWorld notes, his plays are "chiefly known for their bleak, poetic, often surrealist elements, black humor, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society." He is survived by three children: Jesse Mojo, 47, from his marriage to O-Lan Jones; and Hannah Jane, 31, and Samuel Walker, 30, from his long relationship with Jessica Lange, notes People.