Sam Shepard Arrested for Drunk Driving: See the Bloodline Star's Mug Shot

71-year-old actor-playwright was still in jail as of noon Tuesday in Santa Fe, N.M., after bust for aggravated DUI

By Natalie Finn May 26, 2015 9:14 PMTags
Sam ShepardClayton Chase/Getty Images for LG Music Lodge

At least Sam Shepard never made it out of the parking lot.

The actor and Pulitzer-winning playwright was arrested for aggravated DUI outside a restaurant in Santa Fe, N.M., on Monday night after police were called in to check on a patron who seemed too impaired to be driving off on his own.

Lt. Andrea Dobyns of the Santa Fe Police Department confirms to E! News that a security guard from La Choza restaurant called the cops after observing Shepard trying to drive off in his blue Tacoma pickup truck with the emergency break still on.

Santa Fe County

"The officers could smell alcohol on him and he had bloodshot, watery eyes," Dobyns says. "Mr. Shepard performed our standard field sobriety tests," during which Officers "observed enough clues to arrest Mr. Shepard for the DUI."

But the Bloodline star, who told police that he had two tequila drunks at the restaurant, then refused to take a breath test, which in New Mexicio automatically bumps a DUI charge to "aggravated" DUI.

"Officers said Mr. Shepard was compliant," Dobyns added. "They had no issues with the arrest."

As of noon Tuesday the Oscar-nominated actor was still in jail and police said he needed to be arraigned before he is released.

Shepard, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff and is currently playing the patriarch of a family with gobs of secrets on Netflix's Bloodline, has talked openly in the past about his battle with alcoholism. He was also arrested for DUI in 2009.

"And prior to that I was sober for four years and then I relapsed," Shepard told the Guardian in March 2010, referring to that previous DUI bust. "It's a constant struggle. It's such a knucklehead disease because you refuse to see it. It wasn't until the 90s that I actually started going to AA and made a real compact with myself to quit. And I did quit for four years. And then I picked it up again. It's like being a junkie. I think I have that sort of thing in my blood [he also talked about having an alcoholic father], in my psyche. I can become addicted very easily, although the curious thing is that I have two sisters who are not.

"So I don't know. Maybe it's just a toss of the dice."

Shepard is the father of a son with ex-wife O-Lan Jones and has a daughter and son with ex-partner Jessica Lange. They broke up in 2010 after nearly three decades together.

—Reporting by Holly Passalaqua