Sam Shepard is an actor, screenwriter, director and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. The latter came for his 1979 three-act play Buried Child. His other plays include Angel City, Curse of the Starving Class, Killer's Head, Action, The Mad Dog Blues, Cowboy Mouth, The Rock Garden, True West, The God of Hell, and Fool for Love.

He began writing for the screen as one of the screenwriters of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point; wrote the original screenplays for Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (for which he received a BAFTA Award nomination) and Don't Come Knocking (in which he starred); and adapted Fool for Love from his own play, as well as starred in the film version for director Robert Altman. Mr. Shepard wrote and directed the feature films Far North and Silent Tongue.

An Academy Award nominee for his performance as Chuck Yeager in Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff, Mr. Shepard's other notable features as actor include Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven; Daniel Petrie's Resurrection; Jack Fisk's Raggedy Man; Charles Shyer's Baby Boom; Herbert Ross' Steel Magnolias; Volker Schlöndorff's Voyager; Alan J. Pakula's The Pelican Brief; Sean Penn's The Pledge; Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down; Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook; Andrew Dominik's upcoming The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; and Graeme Clifford's Frances, Richard Pearce's Country, Bruce Beresford's Crimes of the Heart, all opposite Jessica Lange.

His notable telefilms and miniseries include Joseph Sargent's Larry McMurtry's ‘Streets of Laredo' and Kathy Bates' Dash and Lilly. The latter portrayal, of author Dashiell Hammett, earned him Emmy and Golden Globe Award nominations.