Sam shepard

Born on November 5, 1943 in Fort Sheridan (Illinois), Samuel Shepard Rogers IV was the son of an Air Force pilot, who later dedicated himself to teaching the Spanish language. He lived out virtually all of his childhood on a farm that would later inspire his work, also marked by his father’s tragic slide into alcoholism.

Young Shepard aspired to be a veterinarian while working as a stable boy on a ranch while attending high school. At this time in his life he began to write poetry, but he also discovered playwrights who would influence his later output, such as  Samuel Beckett , whose “Waiting for Godot” fascinated him.

Although he enrolled at Mount Antonio Junior College to study agriculture, he eventually dropped out to join a traveling theater troupe. After spending a few years with this company, he moved to New York, where he earned a living as a waiter while writing plays. In 1964 he managed to jointly premiere two plays, “Cowboys” and “Rock Garden”, at the Genesis Theatre. He received rave reviews, and from that moment on he did not stop premiering productions Off-Off-Broadway.

After divorcing  O-Lan Jones , an actress with whom he had a son, Shepard had a relationship with  Patti Smith , the famous rock star and poet, with whom he wrote “Cowboy’s Mouth.” “Sam was full of regrets for having left his wife and his son. We felt close but he had to leave (…). One day he said we should write a play,” recalls Patti Smith. “The characters were us and together we embodied our love, imagination and indiscretions. Perhaps it wasn’t so much a play as a ritual. We ritualized the end of our idyll and opened a door for Sam’s escape.”

After spending time in England, Shepard moved to San Francisco during a time when he wrote his most famous plays: “Curse of the Starving Class”, “Buried Child” and “The Real West”.

In 1969 he agreed to work as a film writer on  Me and My Brother , a drama that went unnoticed. Shortly thereafter he played a small role in  Brand X  and in the little known  Renaldo and Clara . He was established as an actor in 1978 by  Terrence Malick , who gave him an important role, in  Days of Heaven , his second feature film. Malick really achieved a perfect film, in which Shepard was not out of place by any means, who did a great job as a rich, taciturn farmer, in need of affection, who hires a couple and a girl to work in his wheat field.

The experience was so enriching for Shepard that from that moment on he began to lavish himself on the big screen. During the filming of  Frances , a biography of the actress with alcoholism problems  Frances Farmer , Shepard fell in love with the woman who embodied her, none other than  Jessica Lange , with whom he began a long relationship. Exhausted from the stress of the big city, Shepard decided to retire with the actress, and his two children, Hanna Jane Shepard and Samuel Walker Shepard, to a secluded ranch outside Stillwater, Minnesota.

Over the years, Shepard has composed memorable characters, such as air hero Chuck Yeager, in the true-life film  Chosen for Glory , the man who is reluctant to do anything romantic for his wife, the owner of a beauty salon ( Dolly Parton ), in  Steel Magnolias , fascinating professor in a relationship with one of his students, the much younger  Julia Roberts  in  The Pelican Brief , and so many others.

His greatest contribution to cinema as a screenwriter is undoubtedly  Paris, Texas , whose script was commissioned by the German director  Wim Wenders , fascinated because he had read Shepard’s book “Motel Chronicles”. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1984. The protagonist, Travis ( Harry Dean Stanton ), a forgetful who appears lost in the desert, is very representative of the characters in Shepard’s theater, losers who have known love, but that they are left with nothing.

Of course, Shepard made himself known as an actor, even in small roles in titles such as  The Oath ,  Noa’s Diary  or  Spy Hunt . Under the orders of the Spanish  Mateo Gil  , he starred in the western  Blackthorn. Fateless , where he played an aging Butch Cassidy, none other than  Paul Newman ‘s character  in  Two Men and One Fate . He starred in Camille Thonan’s thriller  Never Here , in which he played a photographer shortly before his death.