Emilio Estevez kept the family name his father Martin Sheen wished he had
Martin Sheen was born Ramón Estévez and later regretted swapping it for a stage name. His eldest son listened. Emilio Estevez refused to trade on being Martin Sheen's son, became the de facto leader of the 1980s Brat Pack, and then stepped behind the camera, where his father always said he belonged.
Estevez was born in the Bronx on May 12, 1962, the eldest child of the artist Janet Sheen and Martin Sheen; his brother is Charlie Sheen. A part in Catch-22 pulled the family from Manhattan's Upper West Side to California in 1968, and the boy grew up in Malibu, attending Santa Monica High School. At 11 he got a portable movie camera, and at 14 he went with his father to the Philippines for Apocalypse Now, where his scenes as an extra were cut. Back home he co-wrote and starred in a school play about Vietnam veterans; watching it, Sheen realised his son was a natural actor.
He skipped college after graduating in 1980. He liked the ring of the double E initials and did not want to arrive in Hollywood as someone's son, a choice he later linked to pride in his Spanish heritage. His first stage job was alongside his father in Mister Roberts at Burt Reynolds's dinner theatre in Florida, the only role Sheen ever arranged for him. Early work included an uncredited moment in Badlands and a supporting part in Tex.
Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders in 1983 put him alongside Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze and tied him to the Brat Pack. The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire, both in 1985, made him a star. He bought the rights to an S. E. Hinton novel and wrote its screenplay himself, and later led Young Guns and, in the 1990s, played hockey coach Gordon Bombay in The Mighty Ducks films.
Sheen had described him as an officer rather than a soldier, predicting he would need to direct. He debuted as director with Wisdom in 1986 and after the Ducks films largely switched to directing. Bobby, in 2006, earned a Golden Globe nomination for best drama; The Way and The Public followed. He returned as Bombay in a Disney+ series in 2021.
Source: Emilio Estevez
