NEW YORK — Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Oscar-nominated actor and celebrated author whose plays chronicled the explosive fault lines of family and masculinity in the American West, has died. He was 73.

Family spokesman Chris Boneau said Monday that Shepard died Thursday at his home in Kentucky from complications related to Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

The taciturn Shepard, who grew up on a California ranch, was a man of few words who nevertheless produced 44 plays and numerous books, memoirs and short stories. His 1979 play “Buried Child” won the Pulitzer for drama.

His Western drawl and laconic presence made him a reluctant movie star, too. He appeared in dozens of films, and was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in 1983’s astronaut drama “The Right Stuff.”

Shepard recently starred in the first season of the Netflix series “Bloodline” as the patriarch of a prominent Florida Keys family who try to keep a web of secrets from destroying their lives.

Shepard and his former wife, actress Jessica Lange, lived in Stillwater for about nine years. The pair was often spotted around town and their children attended Stillwater schools.

The couple put their estate on the market in 2004 and it was later sold.

In Stillwater, the couple blended in “just like anybody else,” said former Mayor Jay Kimble.

“You’d see them in the bookstore, you’d see them at the post office,” Kimble said. “They were about as normal a people — despite being famous — as you could imagine. They were just normal parents, normal couple, living a normal life in a normal town.”

Shepard was a “cool guy” and a “kind and devoted father,” said Kimble, who used to live down the street from him.

“One of my favorite memories of him is when he was sitting in our house and playing honky-tonk blues on our piano,” Kimble said. “Every board in the house was smiling and dancing.”

Once, Shepard and Lange’s son, Walker, climbed high up in the maple tree outside Kimble’s house.

“We’re sitting on my front porch, and Walker yells down from a tree: ‘Hey, Dad, look at me!’” Kimble said. “He was 60 feet up in the air! I would have started screaming … but Sam was super calm. He said: ‘I see you. Come down here a minute, I want to talk to you.’ The kid comes down, and he said: ‘Don’t be climbing trees without asking permission first.’ There was no negative commentary or whatever. He was just matter-of-fact — there was no blame or judgmental stuff.”

Pioneer Press reporter Mary Divine contributed to this report.