Shepard became very much involved in
New York's off-off-Broadway theater scene, beginning at the age of nineteen. Although his plays were staged at several off-off-Broadway venues, he was most closely connected with Theatre Genesis, housed at St. Mark's Church in the East Village. He acted occasionally in those days, but his interests were almost strictly confined to writing, up until the late 1970s. Most of his writing was for the stage, but he had early screen-writing credits for
Me and My Brother (1968) and
Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970). His early science-fiction play,
The Unseen Hand, influenced
Richard O'Brien's Rocky Horror Show. After three years of living in England, in 1976 Shepard relocated to the
San Francisco Bay Area and was named playwright in residence at the
Magic Theatre where many of his works received their premier productions. Notable work includes
Buried Child,
Curse of the Starving Class in
1978, True West in
1980 and
A Lie of the Mind in
1985. He also continued with his collaboration with
Bob Dylan that started with the surrealist film
Renaldo and Clara on an epic, 11 minute song entitled "
Brownsville Girl", included on the
1986 Knocked Out Loaded album and later compilations.
Shepard began his acting career in earnest when he was cast as the handsome but doomed land baron in Terrence Malick's
Days of Heaven (1978), opposite Richard Gere and Brooke Adams. This led to other important films and roles, most notably his portrayal of
Chuck Yeager in
The Right Stuff, earning him an Oscar nomination in 1984. By 1986, one of his plays,
Fool for Love, was being made into a film directed by Robert Altman; his play
A Lie of the Mind was on Broadway with an all-star cast including Harvey Keitel and Geraldine Page; he was living with
Jessica Lange; and he was working steadily as a film actor -- all of which put him on the cover of
Newsweek magazine. Earlier in his life, during the rebellion of the 1960s, Shepard had vowed famously, "I never want to be on the cover of
Newsweek." Things had changed.
Throughout the years, Shepard has done a considerable amount of teaching on playwriting and other aspects of theatre. His classes and seminars have occurred at various theatre workshops, festivals, and universities. During the 1970s he served a stint as a Regents Professor at the University of California, Davis.
In 1986, Shepard was elected to
The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 2000, Shepard decided to repay a debt of gratitude to the Magic Theatre by staging his play
The Late Henry Moss as a benefit in San Francisco. The cast included Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, and Cheech Marin. The limited, three-month run was sold out.
In 2007, Shepard was featured playing banjo on
Patti Smith's cover of
Nirvana's song,
Smells Like Teen Spirit, on her album Twelve.
Although many artists have had an influence on Shepard's work, one of the most significant has been actor-director
Joseph Chaikin, a veteran of the
Living Theatre and founder of a group called the Open Theatre. The two have often worked together on various projects, and Shepard acknowledges that Chaikin has been a valuable mentor.
