Story here.
This one hurts. I’ve always like his plays, and the version of True West that Showtime aired in 2002 (with Bruce Willis) was a favorite. And his Chuck Yeager was damn good.
You beat me to it.
Great actor and a pretty good playwright too. The role I’ll remember him for best is as the ice-cool pilot in The Right Stuff. (Edit: right, Chuck Yeager.)
Awwwwwww, crap. I just loved him. He had that rare, irresistible combination of understated machismo and brains.
ALS is such an awful way to go, too. This makes me sad.
According to this site he played Chuck Yeasayer.*
*Unless they’ve fixed it by the time you read this.
One person on Twitter mentioned that Sam Shepard will always be Chuck Yeager to to them. I would like to point out that Chuck Yeager is still alive and begs to differ.
Shepard was a better Yeager than the real one.
He was excellent as the farmer in Days of Heaven, a role that had very little dialog, but where he made everything the character was thinking clear.
At that point, I knew him only as a playwright, but he was a helluva actor, too.
I remember him mainly for the Right Stuff (have to watch that movie again). Quite remarkable that Chuck Yeager who is 20 years older has outlived Shepard.
An excuse to rewatch one of my favorite (and almost completely unknown) films: Safe Passage. It features Susan Sarandon, Marcia Gay Harden, Robert Sean Leonard and Sean Astin in addition to Shepard. Some tremendous acting talent there.
Damn. He was a fine playwright. I love the toaster scene in True West. “There’s gonna be a general lack of toast in the neighborhood this morning. Many, many unhappy, bewildered breakfast faces.”
I saw Buried Child when it was brand new, at the Yale Repertory Theater during my freshman year, 1978. He won the Pulitzer for it the next year. Saw a revival of Curse of the Starving Class in the same theater a couple years later.
After I moved to New York, I saw the first revival of True West at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village, with John Malkovich and Garry Sinise before they were John Malkovich and Garry Sinise. The initial staging starred Peter Boyle as Lee, and flopped…the Malkovich/Sinise version rescued it from oblivion.
Very, very sad today. I also liked Jeanne Moreau a lot.
I saw Sam Shepard when I was an extra on The Right Stuff. For the life of me, I can’t remember if we exchanged any words at the wrap party. (Levon Helm was nice, though.)
While it was just a barely-mediocre TV movie overall, Purgatory had him in a role I thoroughly enjoyed. “I have no mother,” indeed.
If it’s a typo, it’s an appropriate one. Naysayers don’t break the sound barrier. 
The real Yeager has outlived the movie Yeager and the movie Ridley. Helm died about 5 years ago.
I suspect it was a stupid autocorrect thing, but someone should have proofed it before it was posted.
Aw, dang. Sam rides off into the sunset… just…dang. 
I guess that is why Yeager got the “pervy guy at the bar” cameo and Shepard got the Yeager role.
Love love love him…RIP Sam
Chuck Yeager could kick Chuck Norris’s ass. 