Fool for Love | Author Biography

Shepard was born Samuel Shepard Rogers III on November 5, 1943, in Fort Sheridan, Illinois. He was the son of Samuel Shepard and Jane Elaine (Schook) Rogers. His father was an Army officer, and Shepard grew up on military bases. The family eventually settled in Duarte, California, where Shepard’s father bought a farm. Shepard attended Mount San Antonio Junior College in Walnut, California, for several years, studying agriculture.

Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard speaking at a workshop at the University of Minnesota

As a teenager, Shepard’s home life grew increasingly difficult; his father had become an abusive alcoholic and father and son frequently were at odds. In 1963, Shepard left home for New York City, seeking work as an actor. On the bus ride to New York, Shepard changed his named from Steve Rogers, as he had been known all his life, to Sam Shepard. The next year his first play, entitled Cowboys, was produced. Through his work as both a writer and actor, Shepard became something of a cult celebrity in New York City’s East Village in the 1960s and early-1970s.

Shepard wrote numerous Off-Broadway and Off- Off-Broadway plays (several of which won Obie Awards), several screenplays (including Zabriskie Point, with four others), and appeared in numerous experimental theatre productions. Many of Shepard’s plays featured characters and myths culled from the vanishing American West as well as more general topics pertaining to American culture. Shepard was married in 1969 to actress O-Lan Jones, with whom he had a son, Jesse. Shepard and his family spent 1971-74 in England, where he wrote some of his best-known early plays, notably 1971’s Mad Dog Blues and 1972’s The Tooth of Crime.

Upon his return to the United States, Shepard’s work took on new dimensions. By the late-1970s, Shepard began acting in feature films. He also continued to write important plays, many of which focused on broken families, difficult relationships between men and women, and the individual’s quest for identity. In 1979, Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, Buried Child. Shepard’s career as a movie actor also grew. He appeared in such notable films as Days of Heaven (1979) and The Right Stuff (1983). In 1983, he worked with Jessica Lange in Frances, becoming romantically involved with her. After divorcing his first wife, Shepard and Lange became a couple and had two children together, Hannah and Sam Walker.

The year 1983 was big one for Shepard, in addition to appearing in two high profile films and meeting his life partner, Lange, he expanded his theatrical influence considerably. He directed the original production of Fool for Love at Circle Repertory Company in New York City. He received two Obie Awards, one for his directing effort and the other for the best new American play. Two years later, in 1985, Shepard wrote the screenplay for Robert Altman’s film adaptation of Fool for Love and played the role of Eddie in the film.

Since then, Shepard has continued to write and direct plays, including the 1986 family play A Lie of the Mind. He has also written several screenplays, including Paris, Texas and Silent Tongue. Shepard spent much of the late-1980s and 1990s acting in numerous films and television movies, including Baby Boom, Thunderheart, Purgatory, and Dash & Lilly, while experimenting with different theatrical forms including adaptation and comedy. By the late-1990s, his reputation was solidified as one of the greatest living American playwrights.