martin sheen

The son of a Spanish father (from a Galician town) and an Irish woman, Ramón Antonio Gerard Estévez –his real name– was born in Dayton (Ohio, USA) on August 3, 1940. During childbirth he suffered a broken left arm, due to which has limited mobility in it and is a little shorter than the right.

Already in high school he discovered that he was good at acting, and decided to become a professional actor despite his father’s opposition. He chose his last name as a tribute to the popular Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who hosted television shows and wrote numerous books and articles. Although Martin Sheen never received acting training, he would soon land roles on the New York stage and even a Tony nomination for his work as a young man who returns home from World War II to find his parents in a turbulent relationship, in “A story of three strangers”, a role that he would repeat much later in the film version.

He was destined to forge little by little as a supporting role in series, before his first appearance in movie theaters, as a bully teenager in The Incident (1967) . In 1961 he married the art student Janet Templeton, with whom he had three sons and a daughter, all of them actors of mixed success: Charlie Sheen (the only one who adopted the artistic last name), Emilio Estevez , Renée Estevez and Ramon Estevez . .

In the 70s he would demonstrate his talent, especially as the young assassin from Badlands , the lieutenant from Trap 22 , and above all the role of another military man, the already legendary Captain Willard, who must locate and kill a dissident colonel, in Apocalypse Now . During the extremely complicated filming of the latter, he consumed alcohol and drugs non-stop to the point that he suffered a heart attack, even receiving the anointing of the sick. It is said that he filmed the opening sequence, in which he dances in front of a mirror, in a drunken state, and that when he hit it he actually cut himself in the hand.

Unfortunately, Sheen did not take advantage of the extraordinary success of the Francis Ford Coppola film. He stood out as a journalist in Gandhi , a military man in The End of the Countdown , and a supporting role in a couple of adaptations of Stephen King ‘s books : The Dead Zone and Eyes of Fire .

He played his son’s father in real life on Wall Street , and also placed himself under the command of another of his offspring, Emilio Estevez, in Bobby and The Way , shot in Galicia, the land of his ancestors, on the Camino from Santiago. He was somewhat forgotten when he was signed to play President Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing of the White House , a memorable series that showed the ins and outs of American politics. For his work, he earned six Emmy nominations and won the Golden Globe.

Sheen has a reputation as a combative activist, engaged in social causes such as opposition to nuclear weapons. He has been detained in various protests. In recent years he has shone as the father of the protagonist’s fiancée in Catch Me If You Can and as an unscrupulous policeman in The Departed . He plays Peter Parker’s uncle in The Amazing Spider-Man .