Ruffian is an American made-for-television movie that tells the story of the U.S. Racing Hall of Fame Champion thoroughbred filly Ruffian who went undefeated until her death after breaking down in a nationally televised match race at Belmont Park on July 6, 1975 against the Kentucky Derby winner, Foolish Pleasure. Made by ESPN Original Entertainment, the film is directed by Yves Simoneau and stars Sam Shepard as Ruffian's trainer, Frank Whiteley. The producers used four different geldings in the role of Ruffian. Locations for the 2007 film included Louisiana Downs in Shreveport, Louisiana and Belmont Park in Elmont, New York.
06-09-2007
1h 29m
THIS
HELLA
Doesn't have an image right now... sorry!has no image... sorry!
Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Yves Simoneau
Writers:
Jim Burnstein, Garrett K. Schiff
Production:
Orly Adelson Productions, ESPN Films, American Broadcasting Company (ABC)
Key Crew
Co-Executive Producer:
Jonathan Eskenas
Executive Producer:
Orly Adelson
Co-Producer:
Kimberly Calhoun Boling
Co-Executive Producer:
Malcolm Petal
Producer:
Robert J. Wilson
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Sam Shepard
Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, director and screenwriter whose career spanned half a century. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child (which was nominated for five Tony Awards) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film The Right Stuff. He received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. New York magazine described him as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs.
As an actor, his best known roles are as Calvin Meyer in Midnight Special, Robert Rayburn on Netflix's series Bloodline, Beverly Weston in August: Osage County, Harlan Whitford in Safe House, Hank Cahill in Brothers, Frank James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, George Cummings in Stealth, Frank Calhoun in The Notebook, Master General William F. Garrison in Black Hawk Down, J.C. Franklin in All the Pretty Horses, Thomas Callahan in The Pelican Brief, Frank Coutelle in Thunderheart, Spud Jones in Steel Magnolias, Dr. Jeff Cooper in Baby Boom, Doc Porter in Crimes of the Heart, and Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.
Over the years, he taught extensively on playwriting and other aspects of theater. He gave classes and seminars at various theater workshops, festivals, and universities. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986.
From 1969 to 1984, he was married to actress O-Lan Jones, with whom he had one son, Jesse Mojo Shepard (born 1970). From 1970 to 1971, he was involved in an extramarital affair with musician Patti Smith. Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote two songs about her affairs with him during Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975. In "Coyote", from her eighth studio album Hejira, she recounts his seduction of her at a period while he was both married and having an extramarital affair with tour manager Christine O'Dell with the lines: "He's got a woman at home, another woman down the hall, but he seems to want me anyway."
He met actress Jessica Lange on the set of the 1982 film Frances, in which they both acted. He moved in with her in 1983, and they were together for 27 years; they separated in 2009. They had two children, Hannah Jane Shepard (born 1986) and Samuel Walker Shepard (born 1987).
In 2014 and 2015, he dated actress Mia Kirshner.
His 50-year friendship with Johnny Dark, stepfather to O-Lan Jones, was the subject of the 2013 documentary Shepard & Dark by Treva Wurmfeld. A collection of Shepard and Dark's correspondence, Two Prospectors, was also published that year.
He died on July 27, 2017, at his home in Midway, KY, aged 73, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frank Joseph Whalley (born July 20, 1963) is an American film and television actor known for his roles in independent films.
Nicholas Pryor (born Nicholas David Probst; January 28, 1935) is an American actor. He has appeared in various television series, films, and stage productions.
Christine Belford (born Christine Riley, c. 1949 – c. 1950) is an American former television and film actress. She has sometimes been credited as Christina Belford.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John McConnell (born November 13, 1958), aka John "Spud" McConnell, is an American actor and radio personality based in New Orleans, Louisiana. McConnell is a character actor who has appeared in more than 40 films, ranging from obscure independent films (mostly filmed locally in New Orleans, or elsewhere set in the Gulf Coast region) to major cinematic release movies (such as the Coen Brothers production O Brother, Where Art Thou?). McConnell has also appeared in numerous plays, including an off-Broadway run in the one-man show The Kingfish, wherein he portrays colorful Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long. He is perhaps best-known for having portrayed Ignatius J. Reilly from the Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces, and in that role was the model for a life-sized bronze statue of the fictitious character on historic Canal Street in downtown New Orleans. On television, McConnell made appearances over three seasons of Roseanne, with good friend and colleague John Goodman. Most recently, McConnell is featured in a recurring role on the FX series The Riches, starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver. McConnell is a conservative afternoon radio personality, hosting a daily call-in talk show, "The Spud Show", on WWL 870 AM and 105.3 FM.
Description above from the Wikipedia article John McConnell (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
J.D. was born in the delta town of Greenville, Mississippi (also the birthplace of Muppets creator Jim Henson) on the same day Richard Nixon was elected president. He is of Irish-French-German-Cherokee-Choctaw decent, the oldest of 7 siblings, and attended 17 different schools (public and private) while moving back and forth between his mother and father. His great-great-great-great uncle was Horace Mann, the founder of the American Public School system. His father (Puddin - yep, that's what they call him) is a welder/artist/amateur archaeologist and inventor. His mother (Sally) has had many professions, including concert promoter and owner of a country/western nightclub called The Headless Horseman, where as a young child, J.D. spent many school nights until the wee hours of the morning hanging out backstage and on stage with the likes of Hank Williams, Jr., Juice Newton, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Paycheck, David Allen Coe, Ray Price, and many others.
After a short stint in college and a 15 month stint in the Marine Corps stationed at 29 Palms, California and after hanging out with some actors in L.A., J.D. thought he would give acting a shot. His only experience with acting had been playing the Prince in his pre-school production of The Nutcracker, and getting kicked out of his senior play, Oklahoma, after his second rehearsal because he and a friend drank a beer before hand. After the Marine Corps, he returned to Mississippi and worked as a debt collector for his mother's collection agency. After a year of hating his job, he decided to return to college and get a degree in theatre at The University of Southern Mississippi. Once on stage at college, he knew acting was what he had to do. His second year in theatre, he was one of 20 finalists in the state selected to attend SETC (Southeastern Theatre Conference). In 1995, a friend offered J.D. a $1,000 to come to Los Angeles and perform a lead role in his play "Dylan's Ghost" at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica. J.D. took him up on the offer and left college a semester before graduating and since then has lived back and forth between Hollywood, California, Austin, Texas, and Oxford, Mississippi, where he just completed writing and directing his first independent feature Glorious Mail(2005).
Even though he appeared on the short-lived game show, Hollywood Showdown with Todd Newton and won nearly $12,000, his friends like to tell him that he's almost one lucky son of a gun. Mainly because he's come so close to landing lead roles in major films so many times, usually being the director's second choice. In 2004 his luck proved true once again when he purchased a $100 raffle ticket and was 1st Runner Up (2nd Choice) for a $250,000 house in United Way's New Home Giveaway, where instead he won an artist's print worth $80. IMDb Mini Biography By: JDsMOM
