Battling racism, Martin Sheen changed name to realise childhood dream of stardom
Born Ramon Estevez, Hollywood star Martin Sheen changed his name to avoid the racism towards Puerto Ricans
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FROM the time he saw his first movie as a seven-year-old, Ramon Estevez knew what he would do when he grew up. Racism towards Puerto Ricans being rife in New York in the early 1960s, his dream came true under a stage name — Martin Sheen.
Sheen, who never officially changed his name, was born 75 years ago, on August 3, 1940 in Dayton, Ohio, the seventh son of Spanish immigrant Francisco Estevez and his Irish-born wife Mary Ann Phalen. Phalen lost her first two babies, but another nine sons and one daughter survived to grow up in a poor, loving but stern Catholic home, marred by Mary’s death when Sheen was 11. His father then raised his young family while working fulltime with National Cash Registers.
“It was tough after Mother died,” Sheen later wrote. “We each had to work to support ourselves. I was a caddie from the time I was nine until I left home, carrying golf bags for wealthy people. That’s how my social conscience was formed. The rich were my best teachers: I saw their inhumanity, selfishness, dishonesty, but I never saw a satisfied rich man. They always wanted more.”
BOUND FOR NEW YORK
He also acted in school productions at Chaminade Catholic Boys’ high school and argued with his father about pursuing an acting career. With a $300 loan from their local priest, on January 31, 1959 Sheen boarded a Greyhound bus for New York.
Taking work as a theatre usher and messenger, he tried for stage roles, only to be told the job was taken once he gave his name. He made a commercial decision to combine the names of CBS casting director Robert Dale Martin, with New York bishop Fulton Sheen. Within months he had a backstage $5 a week job as janitor and occasional actor at Judith Malina and Julian Beck’s avant grade Living Theatre.
BROADWAY DREAM
He met art student Janet Templeton, also from Ohio, in 1960. In June 1961 she joined him on a 10-city European tour with The Living Theatre. They married in December 1961 and their first son Emilio was born in May 1962, as Sheen continued struggling with his acting career. The family survived on a Macy’s store credit card and second-hand baby goods from the Actors’ Equity Bundles For Babies relief fund.
With second son Ramon born in 1963, in 1964 Sheen made his Broadway debut in a small role in Never Live Over A Pretzel Factory, before winning a supporting role in theatre hit The Subject Was Roses. Janet and the children joined Sheen for the Roses’ US tour, as their family expanded to include Carlos (Charlie), born in 1965 and daughter Renee, born in 1967, by the time he finished a movie version of Roses in 1968.
His role in Catch 22 in 1969 took the family to Mexico and California. Sheen took Emilio and Ramon for filming in Italy, adding a trip to Galicia, Spain “to see where my father had come from”, when he slept in the bed where his father was born.
THE BIG BREAK
Sheen’s screen break came in 1973 with Badlands, a small independent picture and the first film by writer-director Terrence Malick. Cast with Sissy Spacek, they set off on a casual killing spree before heading for Dakota.
His best known role — at least until 1999, when cast as President Josiah Bartlet in NBC television’s Emmy Award-winning drama The West Wing — came in the 1979 blockbuster Apocalypse Now. Steve McQueen and Al Pacino apparently turned down offers from Francis Ford Coppola to play soldier-assassin Captain Benjamin Willard. Next choice Harvey Keitel was sacked after three week’s filming in Philippine jungles.
APOCALYPSE NOW NIGHTMARE
Beset with disasters, a 16-week location shoot ended up taking 16 months. Buffeted by a typhoon, cast and crew boozed in hotel resorts as Coppola constantly reworked the script. Sheen, under pressure to get his family home to Malibu where he and Janet had bought a house, suffered a heart attack midway through.
“I was drinking heavily,” he explained, “I was confused about who I was and why I was here. I was doing this humungous film that had so much riding on it. I had gotten very low. I didn’t feel any sense of control or personal worth.”
Recovering from alcoholism by returning to his Catholic faith, Sheen was later cast in Wall Street (1987) and The American President (1995).
When the West Wing finished in 2006, Sheen joined son Emilio in Spain in 2009 to film family pilgrimage The Way (2010).
Originally published as Battling racism, Martin Sheen changed name to realise childhood dream of stardom
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