Playwright, actor, and director Sam Shepard is a serious and distinguished playwright whose work is performed by his peers and admired by critics and theatergoers in many countries. He is, however, most widely and popularly known, particularly in the United States, as a movie actor, notably in The Right Stuff (1983), writer-director Philip Kaufman's tribute to the Mercury project astronauts which has become ingrained in American popular culture. Shepard played Chuck Yeager and was Oscar-nominated for his fine performance. His stage and screen persona is in the strong and silent mold—tall, slim, cleft-chinned and good looking—and he has made effective appearances in numerous other films, among them Crimes of the Heart (1987), Steel Magnolias (1989) and Thunderheart (1992) that have varied in both quality and success. He co-starred with Jessica Lange, later his off-screen partner and mother of some of his children, in Francis (1982) and Country...