Samuel Shepard Rogers III was an American playwright, actor, and filmmaker whose contribution to film, theatre, and literature spanned half a century. Hailing from a family of educators, Shepard developed an attraction towards the works of Samuel Beckett, jazz, and abstract expressionism during his college years. In 1962, while in New York City, he was introduced to the Off-Off-Broadway theatre scene. He finished his first play, ‘Cowboys’ in 1964. While in the initial years of his career, he was exclusively occupied with stage works, in 1969, he co-wrote the script for the family-drama ‘Me and My Brother’. Shepard ventured into acting in 1970 and over the years, established himself as a prominent character actor, first in films and later on television, even earning an Oscar nod for his performance in ‘The Right Stuff’. His impressive body of work went through distinct transformation as he matured as an author and intellectual, from the absurdism of his early days to the realism of his later plays. Regarded as one of the most influential playwrights and screenwriters of the modern age, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 and ten Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most received by any writer or director.