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Actor

1940-08-03 · Dayton, Ohio, USA · Male

64 series in the catalog

Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez (born August 3, 1940), known professionally as Martin Sheen, is an American actor. His work spans more than six decades of television and film, and his accolades include three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and four Actor Awards. In 1989, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2025, The Independent ranked Sheen as the greatest actor never to have been nominated for an Academy Award.

Sheen was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his breakthrough performance in The Subject Was Roses (1964). He later starred in its 1968 film adaptation, which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination. He achieved further recognition for his roles in Terrence Malick's crime drama Badlands (1973) and Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War drama Apocalypse Now (1979), the latter earning him a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. His other notable films include Catch-22 (1970), The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), Gandhi (1982), The Dead Zone (1983), Wall Street (1987), Gettysburg (1993), The American President (1995), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Departed, Bobby (both 2006), The Way (2010), The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), and Judas and the Black Messiah (2021).

Sheen received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role in Murphy Brown (1994), and later received widespread acclaim portraying President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet in The West Wing (1999–2006), for which he received six nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series tying the record for most nominations without a win in the category. His other work in television includes roles such as Eddie Slovik in The Execution of Private Slovik (1974), Robert F. Kennedy in The Missiles of October (1974), Michael McCord in The California Kid (1974), John Dean in Blind Ambition (1979), and John F. Kennedy in Kennedy (1983). He later played Robert Hanson in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie (2015–2022).

Born and raised in the United States by a Spanish father and an Irish mother, he adopted the stage name Martin Sheen to help him gain acting parts. He is the father of four children, all of whom are actors. Sheen has directed one film, Cadence (1990), in which he appears alongside his sons Charlie and Ramón. He has narrated, produced, and directed documentary projects and has been active in liberal politics.

Early life and education

Sheen was born in Dayton, Ohio, on August 3, 1940, to Francisco Estévez Martínez (1898–1974) and Mary-Ann née Phelan (1903–1951). During birth, Sheen's left arm was crushed by forceps, giving him limited lateral movement of that arm (Erb's palsy) and resulting in the arm being three inches (8 cm) shorter than his right arm. Both of Sheen's parents were immigrants; his father was Spanish, from Salceda de Caselas, Galicia, and his mother was Irish, from Borrisokane, County Tipperary. After moving to Dayton in the 1930s, his father became a factory worker/machinery inspector at the National Cash Register Company. Sheen's maternal uncle, Michael Phelan, fought in the Irish Civil War as a volunteer in the Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army, and was imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin. Sheen grew up on Brown Street in the South Park neighborhood, the seventh of ten children (nine boys and a girl). Due to his father's work, the family lived for a time on the island of Bermuda, where five of his brothers were born. Martin was the first child to be born in Dayton, after the family's return. Sheen contracted polio as a child and had to remain bedridden for a year. His doctor's treatment using Sister Kenny's method helped him regain use of his legs.

When Sheen was ten years old, his mother died, and the children faced the possibility of living in an orphanage or foster homes. The family was able to remain together with the assistance of the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Dayton. Raised as a Catholic, he graduated from Chaminade High School (now Chaminade Julienne Catholic High School). At fourteen years old he organized a strike of golf caddies while working at a private golf club in Dayton, Ohio. He complained about the golfers, saying: "They often used obscene language in front of us... we were little boys and they were abusive... anti-Semitic.... And they, for the most part, were upstanding members of the community."

Sheen was drawn to acting at a young age, but his father disapproved of his interest in the field. Despite his father's opposition, Sheen borrowed money from a Catholic priest and moved to New York City in his early twenties, hoping to make it as an actor. He spent two years in the Living Theatre company. It was in New York that he met Catholic activist Dorothy Day. Working with her Catholic Worker Movement, he began his commitment to social justice, and later went on to play Peter Maurin, cofounder of the Catholic Worker Movement, in Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story. Sheen deliberately failed the entrance examination for the University of Dayton so that he could pursue his acting career.

He adopted his stage name, Martin Sheen, from a combination of the CBS casting director Robert Dale Martin, who gave him his first big break, and Catholic archbishop and broadcaster Fulton J. Sheen. In a 2003 Inside the Actors Studio interview, Sheen explained, Whenever I would call for an appointment, whether it was a job or an apartment, and I would give my name, there was always that hesitation and when I'd get there, it was always gone. So I thought, I got enough problems trying to get an acting job, so I invented Martin Sheen. It's still Estevez officially. I never changed it officially. I never will. It's on my driver's license and passport and everything. I started using Sheen, I thought I'd give it a try, and before I knew it, I started making a living with it and then it was too late. In fact, one of my great regrets is that I didn't keep my name as it was given to me. I knew it bothered my dad.

Career

1963–1979: Rise to prominence

Sheen was greatly influenced by the actor James Dean. Speaking of the impact Dean had on him, Sheen stated, "All of his movies had a profound effect on my life, in my work and all of my generation. He transcended cinema acting. It was no longer acting, it was human behavior." Sheen developed a theatre company with other actors in hopes that a production would earn him recognition. In 1963, he made an appearance in "Nightmare", an episode of the television science fiction series The Outer Limits. In 1964, he co-starred in the Broadway play The Subject Was Roses; he later reprised his role in the 1968 film of the same name, and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Sheen also starred in the television production Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1966), an adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play Camino Real directed by Jack Landau and presented by NET, a PBS predecessor. In 1968, he played the titular role in Hamlet, directed by Joseph Papp at The Public Theater, with dialogue mostly in English and some in Spanish as Hamlet's alter ego.

During the 1960s and early 1970s Sheen appeared as a guest star in many popular television series, including Insight (1960s–1980s), My Three Sons (1964), Flipper (1967), The F.B.I. (1968), Mission: Impossible (1969), Hawaii Five-O (1970), Dan August (1971), The Rookies, Columbo, and The Streets of San Francisco (all 1973). He also had a recurring role as Danny Morgan in Mod Squad (1970–1971). By the early 1970s, Sheen was increasingly focusing on television films and motion pictures. He portrayed Dobbs in the 1970 film adaptation of Catch-22. He then co-starred in the controversial Emmy Award-winning 1972 television film That Certain Summer, said to be the first television movie in America to portray homosexuality in a sympathetic light.

His next important feature film role was in 1973 when he starred…