Sam Shepard's Real Name: Sam Shepard

Quick answer: Sam Shepard is known professionally and in major reference works as Sam Shepard. Encyclopaedia Britannica records that he was born on November 5, 1943, at Fort Sheridan, near Highland Park, Illinois, and that he died on July 27, 2017, in Midway, Kentucky. He was an American playwright and actor whose work includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child (Britannica).

Real name and early life

The Library of Congress heading is "Shepard, Sam, 1943-2017," with variants including "Rogers, Samuel Shepard, 1943-2017." A pre-publication galley for a 1992 book, cited there, says he was born Samuel Shepard Rogers and was called Steve by his family. Because that longer original name is documented in the Library of Congress file through a book galley rather than a fully independent encyclopedia lead, this page uses the public name in the title and records the Rogers form in the body. Britannica says that as the son of a career army father he spent his childhood on military bases across the United States and in Guam before the family settled on a farm in Duarte, California. After a year of agricultural studies in college, he joined a touring company of actors and, in 1963, moved to New York City.

Career highlights

His early one-act plays found a welcome Off-Off-Broadway. In the 1965–66 season he won Obie Awards for Chicago, Icarus's Mother, and Red Cross. He lived in England from 1971 to 1974, when The Tooth of Crime and Geography of a Horse Dreamer premiered in London. In late 1974 he became playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Curse of the Starving Class (produced 1977), the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child (produced 1978), and True West (produced 1980) are often grouped as studies of troubled family ties. He returned to acting in the late 1970s in films including Days of Heaven (1978) and The Right Stuff (1983), the latter bringing an Academy Award nomination. Later film work includes The Pelican Brief (1993), The Notebook (2004), and August: Osage County (2013). Other plays include A Lie of the Mind (produced 1985) and The God of Hell (produced 2004).

Death

Britannica records that Shepard died on July 27, 2017, in Midway, Kentucky.

Name notes for searchers

Sam Shepard is the professional name used in Britannica. Library of Congress citations also record Samuel Shepard Rogers, with Steve as a family name. Searchers looking for the author of Buried Child or the actor in The Right Stuff are usually aiming at the same person.