Sadie Gertrude Stern (October 31, 1934 – November 17, 2023), known professionally as Suzanne Shepherd, was an American actress and theater director.[1][2]
Background
Shepherd was born Sadie Gertrude Stern on October 31, 1934, to a Jewish family in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the daughter of Dora (Mendelson), a cook, and David Stern, a distributor of jukeboxes and vending machines.[3] She began using the name "Suzanne" when she was 13.[3] She attended Battin High School and Bennington College, and studied acting with Sanford Meisner.[3][4] She later went on to teach Meisner's program of acting study, the first woman to do so.[5]
Shepherd was also a theatre director, working in New York and in regional theatre.[4]
Personal life and death
From a marriage to David Shepherd, which lasted from 1957 until their divorce in 1966, she had a son, who died in 2011, and a daughter, artist Kate Shepherd.[3][6] Her second marriage, to Carroll Calkins, lasted from 1996 until his death in 2006.[3]