Martin Sheen

After moving to Dayton in the 1930s, his father was a factory worker/machinery inspector at the National Cash Register Company.

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 on the island of Bermuda on St. John's Road, Pembroke Parish, where five of his brothers were born.

Martin was the first child to be born in Dayton, Ohio, after the family returned from Bermuda.

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 he was eleven years old, Sheen's 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 would one day go 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.

Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez (born August 3, 1940), known professionally as Martin Sheen, is an American actor.

In a career spanning six decades he received numerous accolades including three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Sheen was born in Dayton, Ohio, on August 3, 1940, to Mary-Ann (née Phelan) and Francisco Estévez Martínez.

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 3 in shorter than his right.

Both of Sheen's parents were immigrants; his mother was Irish, from Borrisokane, County Tipperary, and his father, who was Spanish, was born in Salceda de Caselas, Galicia.

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 is also known for such notable films as The Subject Was Roses (1968), Catch-22 (1970), The California Kid (1974), Gandhi (1982), Wall Street (1987), Gettysburg (1993), The American President (1995), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Departed (2006), Bobby (2006), Selma (2014), and Judas and the Black Messiah (2021).

Sheen rose to prominence in his breakthrough roles in Terrence Malick's crime drama Badlands (1973) and Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War drama Apocalypse Now (1979).

He is also known for portraying Robert F. Kennedy in The Missiles of October (1974), Eddie Slovik in The Execution of Private Slovik (1974), John Dean in Blind Ambition (1979), and John F. Kennedy in Kennedy (1983).

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.

He received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role in Murphy Brown (1994).

He played President Jed Bartlet in The West Wing, for which he received six Emmy nominations.

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."

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.

He also portrayed Uncle Ben in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).

He 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.