Sam Shepard was one of those rare silver screen personalities that only comes around a few times in a generation.
Even in the later years of his career, Shepard kept himself busy — perhaps most notably in director Jeff Nichols’ southern love letters Mud and Midnight Special.
Starring in any one of those movies would be impressive, so that should give you a sense of the level that Shepard was working at before his death.
Breaking onto the scene in the late 1970s in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, he earned an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Chuck Yeager in 1983’s The Right Stuff, and he had no less than 68 credits to his name (big and small screen alike) at the time of his death.