Recently I found out that the Sam Shepherd I’ve always enjoyed as an actor [esp Chuck Yaeger in The Right Stuff], is the same Sam Shepherd who is an accomplished playwright and author and whom I always assumed to be a different person. I have to say, he’s a mighty impressive bloke on all three counts.
What other people would have comparable achievement and critical acclaim across at least three fields of the arts?
For the purpose of this discussion I think some longevity and sustained output in each field is required as well as the acclaim of peers. I would not include, say, The Adam Sandler Barbecue Recipe Book as evidence of him either being a writer or cook, so he remains a single threat [or annoyance may be a better word].
Martin Mull has an MFA in painting and started out as that, with work appearing in major art galleries over the years.
He is a singer-songwriter who recorded eight albums of comic songs since the 1970s.
He started acting after that, appearing movies like FM, Serial, and * Mr. Mom* and with roles on TV in Arrested Development (as Gene Parmesan); *Roseanne; Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman; America 2-Night, Two and a half Men; Sabrina the Teenage Witch, * and others.
He also created the TV series Domestic Life (with Steve Martin, who used one of Mulls paintings for his album “Love as Come for You.”)
Warren Beatty had already earned Oscar nominations as an actor and a writer and a producer before he got Oscar nominations as the actor and writer and producer and director of one movie; and then, after getting Oscar nominations as the actor and writer and producer and director of another movie, he went back to earning Oscar nominations as an actor and a writer and a producer.
Now, pulling off that actor/writer/producer/director bit for one film at the Oscars? That’s rare; it’s crazy rare. But pulling it off twice? AFAIK, that’s unheard-of.
Of course, his real talent was getting folks to say “uh, it’s not vanity if he’s right.”
Stephen King–mega-novelist, guitarist (I don’t think The Rock-Bottom Remainders recorded anything, but they [were?] playing benefit shows), and never-going-to-win-an-Oscar actor (I thought his performances were just fine for the movies he was in).
Prince: Songwriter; world class musician on at least three instruments; arranger; producer. And according to Charlie Murphy a badass 'baller, and according to ?uestlove, an excellent roller skater.
Not just a fine actor, but a publisher (Perceval Press), writer of poetry, books about the arts, nonfiction, some in Spanish and Danish, a photographer and a painter as well.
With his cameo in Knight of Cups, Peter Matthiessen qualifies.
Among other things, he was the only winner of National Book Awards for fiction and nonfiction.
From his New York Times obit:
“Mr. Matthiessen was a man of many parts: littérateur, journalist, environmentalist, explorer, Zen Buddhist, professional fisherman and, in the early 1950s, undercover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency in Paris. Only years later did Mr. Plimpton discover, to his anger and dismay, that Mr. Matthiessen had helped found The [Paris] Review as a cover for his spying on Americans in France.”
Wallace Shawn - actor, playwright, essayist and comedian.
Al Franken - comedian, actor, writer and politician.
Ben Carson - neurosurgeon, author, and politician
Ben Franklin - one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. author, printer, political theorist, politician, , postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat.
Paul Newman - actor, IndyCar driver, entrepreneur, activist, and philanthropist.
Kris Kristofferson was a Rhodes scholar, but he doesn’t have a Ph.D.
Hedy Lamarr is more accurately described as an electrical engineer rather than a rocket scientist, since frequency-hopping is about the control of radio signals rather than about the building of rockets. Of course, she wasn’t in any professional sense either one.
Here’s an article about multi-talented people in the arts (although it’s not totally accurate either, since it claims that Danica McKellar has a Ph.D., although she doesn’t).
William Smith, who made a career playing bikers and gangsters, is fluent in four languages, has a master’s degree in Russian, and taught at UCLA before Hollywood lured him away.
