Martin Sheen

Martin Sheen (born August 3, 1940, Dayton, Ohio, U.S.) is an American actor best known for playing Capt. Benjamin L. Willard in the epic Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now (1979) and for portraying the U.S. president Josiah Bartlet in the political drama television series The West Wing (1999–2006). He is the father of actors Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Ramon Estevez, and Renée Estevez.

Early life

Sheen was born to a Spanish father, Francisco Estévez, and an Irish mother, Mary-Ann Phelan, both of whom were devout members of the Roman Catholic Church. His father worked in a factory as a machine inspector, and his mother was a homemaker. He was the seventh of 10 children (nine boys and one girl), and the large family squeezed into a three-bedroom house. His mother died when he was 11 years old, which put additional financial stress on his father, who had to support a large family on a meager salary. Sheen worked as a golf caddy to help supplement the family income. He also served as an altar boy at church, and he considered careers in the priesthood, acting, and law enforcement before settling on acting. His father wanted him to get a college education, but Sheen, who was set on becoming an actor, deliberately failed the University of Dayton entrance exam.

Career

He moved to New York City after high school, auditioning for acting roles during the day and working as a stock clerk at night. Concerned that he would be typecast because of his Spanish name, he adopted the professional name Martin Sheen after Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, whom he admired. He never changed his name legally, and his official personal documents and identification cards still list his name as Ramón Estévez. In a 2022 interview with Closer Weekly magazine, Sheen called the decision to change his name “one of my regrets.”

In 1961 he married actress and producer Janet Templeton, who was an art student at the time. In that same year, he made his New York City stage debut in the play The Connection, which he continued with when it was later also staged in London. Sheen landed his first significant television role in 1963 alongside actor George C. Scott in the drama series East Side/West Side. In 1964 he made his Broadway debut in the play Never Live over a Pretzel Factory, and later that year he starred in the play The Subject Was Roses, for which he received a Tony Award nomination. He also starred in the film adaptation of The Subject Was Roses, which was released in 1968.

In 1970 he portrayed the emotionally unstable copilot Dobbs in the film adaptation of Joseph Heller’s satirical war novel Catch-22 (1961). Sheen’s breakout film role came in 1973 when he portrayed a killer on the run with actress Sissy Spacek in director Terrence Malick’s crime drama Badlands. In 1979 he landed his most prominent movie role, in Francis Ford Coppola’s landmark war film Apocalypse Now, which is loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (1902). Sheen, a last-minute replacement for Harvey Keitel, played Capt. Benjamin L. Willard, who is tasked with finding and assassinating a rogue Green Beret colonel named Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando), who has set up a renegade army in Cambodia.

The rigors of filming Apocalypse Now took a toll on Sheen’s mental and physical health. He cut his hand open while punching a mirror in a scene. He also suffered a heart attack while filming on location in the Philippines and had to be airlifted to a hospital in Manila. Additionally, he suffered a nervous breakdown, telling Rolling Stone magazine in a 1979 interview, “I completely fell apart. My spirit was exposed. I cried and cried. I turned completely gray—my eyes, my beard—all gray.” After filming ended, he started drinking heavily and fell into a deep depression.

Sheen has appeared in several other prominent films, including playing journalist Vince Walker in the biopic Gandhi (1982) and portraying White House Chief of Staff A.J. MacInerney in the comedy-drama The American President (1995). He went on to play the district attorney Roger Strong in the crime biopic Catch Me If You Can (2002) and the police captain Oliver Queenan in Martin Scorsese’s organized crime thriller The Departed (2006).

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He has performed in a handful of films with his family members. He teamed up with his son Charlie in the 1987 drama Wall Street after Charlie suggested to director Oliver Stone that Martin play Carl Fox, the father of Charlie’s character, Bud Fox. He joined an all-star cast (which included Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore, and Harry Belafonte) in the biographical drama Bobby (2006), about the assassination of U.S. senator and 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, which was written and directed by his son Emilio. He also worked with family members in The Way (2010), playing an ophthalmologist who walks the Camino de Santiago (a Christian pilgrimage route in France and Spain) to honor his late son. “It was a family affair,” he told Yahoo! Entertainment in 2022. “Janet produced it, Renée appeared in it, Ramon appeared in it and Emilio wrote and directed it…I think it’s the best thing I ever did.”

In 1999 director Aaron Sorkin cast Sheen as Pres. Josiah Bartlet in the political serial drama The West Wing. Sorkin initially envisioned Sheen appearing in only four or five episodes per season, but, after the show’s pilot episode aired, Sorkin decided that Sheen should be a regular cast member. Sheen later portrayed Robert Hanson, the ex-husband of entrepreneur Grace Hanson (played by Jane Fonda), in the television comedy series Grace and Frankie (2015–2022).

Sheen won a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding guest actor in a comedy series for his performance in a 1994 episode of the situation comedy Murphy Brown. Additionally, he earned a Daytime Emmy Award for acting in 1981 and for directing in 1986, and he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1989. He won a Golden Globe Award for best performance by an actor in a television series in 2001 for his work in The West Wing. Sheen authored the book Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son with his son Emilio in 2012.