Sam Shepard appreciation: The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-nominated ‘The Right Stuff’ actor wore many hats in theater, on screen
A taciturn, Marlboro Man-type demeanor defined Shepard as an actor, including what’s likely his most iconic performance as test pilot Chuck Yeager in “The Right Stuff, ” the 1983 movie that earned him an Academy Award nomination. The shot of Shepard as a bloodied Yeager, walking away from a crash, remains perhaps the film’s most indelible image.
“Is that a man?” a medic asks as they spot a silhouette driving toward the scene, to which his superior replies, “You’re damn right it is.”
Shepard’s writing — which explored dark issues surrounding American family life, in plays like “Buried Child” (his Pulitzer winner) and “True West” — didn’t completely mesh with the persona he projected on screen. After a splashy start in director Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven, ” his good looks frequently cast him as a romantic interest for leading actresses, including Julia Roberts in “The Pelican Brief” and Jessica Lange in the 1982 movie “Frances, ” which kicked off a long romance between them.
A number of Shepard’s plays were adapted either as movies or for television, and he even tried his hand at directing with “Far North, ” which starred Lange; and “Silent Tongue, ” a grim 1993 western.
Still, Shepard seemed to draw a fairly stark line between his prolific output for the theater and his equally busy calendar as an actor. Asked if he was good on stage in a New York Times interview last year, Shepard said, “Not as good as I am in the movies. You don’t have to do anything in the movies. You just sit there. Well, that’s not entirely true. You do less. I find the whole situation of confronting an audience terrifying.”
In truth, Shepard confronted audiences through different media over a career that spanned 50 years. And if the process wasn’t always easy for him, in terms of managing to make it look that way, you’re damn right he did.
