Actor, playwright Sam Shepard has died

Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and Oscar-nominated actor Sam Shepard has died at age 73 from complications related to Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Shepard’s plays chronicled the fault lines of family and masculinity in the American West. His 1979 play Buried Child won the Pulitzer for drama. The taciturn Shepard, who grew up on a California ranch, produced 44 plays and numerous books, memoirs, and short stories. His Western drawl and laconic presence made him a reluctant movie star, but he nevertheless appeared in dozens of films and was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in 1983’s The Right Stuff. Shepard recently starred in the first season of the Netflix series Bloodline as the patriarch of a prominent Florida Keys family with a web of secrets.