Sam Shepard has died.
The Oscar-nominated actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright passed away on Thursday at his home in Kentucky, the New York Times reported. As a spokesman for the Shepard family confirmed to the newspaper, the star suffered complications from Lou Gehrig's disease. Shepard was 73 years old.
As famous off camera as he was in front of it, the star first earned his stripes in the theater world as an off-off-Broadway playwright and later wrote more than a dozen films, a few of which he also directed.
He made his debut in front of the camera in 1970 and rose to fame as a prominent actor with roles in The Right Stuff, Steel Magnolias, Days of Heaven, All the Pretty Horses and more recently in Mud and August: Osage County.
Meanwhile, fans of newer generations knew him as Noah Calhoun's father in The Notebook or as the narrator in Charlotte's Web. He made his final film performance in this year's thriller Never Here.
Shepard earned an Oscar nomination in 1984 for his performance in The Right Stuff while his turn as Dashiell Hammett in the 1999 TV movie, Dash and Lilly, garnered him a Golden Globe nod. He was nominated for three Pulitzer Prizes for Drama for his plays Fool for Love, True West and Buried Child, the third winning in 1979.
Shepard is survived by his three children, Jesse Shepard, Hannah Shepard and Samuel Shepard. He had Hannah and Samuel with Jessica Lange, whom he lived with for more than two decades before their separation in 2009.
Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this difficult time.