Background and career
Emilio Estevez (; born May 12, 1962) is an American actor and filmmaker. The son of actor Martin Sheen and the older brother of Charlie Sheen, he made his film debut with an uncredited role in Badlands (1973). He later received his first credited appearance with a supporting role in the coming-of-age film Tex (1982). Estevez gained mainstream recognition with a starring role in the drama film The Outsiders (1983), leading him to be associated with a group of young actors known as the "Brat Pack". After starring in the films Nightmares (1983) and Repo Man (1984), Estevez had his breakout with starring roles in the commercially successful Brat Pack films The Breakfast Club (1985) and St. Elmo's Fire (1985). Following his breakout, he starred in the films Maximum Overdrive (1986), Stakeout (1987), Young Guns (1988), and Young Guns II (1990). In the 1990s, Estevez played the lead role of Gordon Bombay in the film series The Mighty Ducks (1992–1996). He also starred in the films Freejack (1992), Loaded Weapon 1 (1993), Another Stakeout (1993), and Judgment Night (1993). Estevez made his directorial debut with the crime film Wisdom (1986), which he also starred in. He later directed and starred in the films Men at Work (1990) and The War at Home (1996), and following the final film in the Mighty Ducks series, Estevez primarily focused on directorial work. He directed and starred in the drama film Bobby (2006), which was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, and also earned Estevez a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. He also directed and starred in the films The Way (2010) and The Public (2018). Outside of directing in recent years, Estevez had a starring voice role in the English dub of the fantasy film Arthur and the Invisibles (2006) and reprised his role as Gordon Bombay in a regular capacity on the Disney+ television series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (2021–2022).
Estevez was born in the Bronx, the eldest child of artist Janet Sheen and actor Martin Sheen (legally Ramón Estévez). His siblings are Ramon Estevez, Charlie Sheen (born Carlos Estévez) and Renée Estevez. Estevez's paternal grandparents were Irish and Spanish immigrants. His father is a "devout Catholic" and his mother is a "strict Southern Baptist". Estevez initially attended school in the New York City public school system but transferred to a private academy once his father's career took off. He lived on Manhattan's Upper West Side until his family moved west in 1968 when his father was cast in Catch-22. Growing up in Malibu, California, Estevez attended Santa Monica High School. When Estevez was 11 years old, his father bought the family a portable movie camera. Estevez also appeared in Meet Mr. Bomb, a short anti-nuclear power film produced at his high school. Estevez was 14 when he accompanied his father to the Philippines, where Sheen was shooting Apocalypse Now. Estevez had a role as an extra in Apocalypse Now, but his scenes were deleted. When they returned to Los Angeles, Estevez co-wrote and starred in a high school play about Vietnam veterans called Echoes of an Era and invited his parents to watch it. Sheen recalls being astonished by his son's performance, and "began to realize: my God, he's one of us." After graduating from Santa Monica High School in 1980, he refused to go to college and instead went into acting. Unlike his brother Charlie, Estevez and his other siblings did not adopt their father's stage name. Emilio reportedly liked the alliteration of the double 'E' initials, and "didn't want to ride into the business as 'Martin Sheen's son'." Upon his brother's using his birth name Carlos Estevez for the film Machete Kills, Estevez mentioned that he was proud of his Spanish heritage and was glad that he never adopted a stage name, taking advice from his father who regretted adopting the name Martin Sheen as opposed to using his birth name, Ramón Estévez.
Estevez's first role was in a drama produced by the Catholic Paulist order. Soon after, he made his stage debut with his father in Mister Roberts at Burt Reynolds' dinner theater in Jupiter, Florida (this was the only job his father ever placed him in). Later, father and son worked together in the 1982 ABC-TV film about juveniles in jail, In the Custody of Strangers, in which Estevez did the casting.
Estevez received much attention during the 1980s for being a member of the Brat Pack and was credited as the leader of the group of young actors. One of his first major roles was as Keith "Two-Bit" Mathews in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 cinematic adaptation of S. E. Hinton's novel, The Outsiders, where he shared the screen with an ensemble cast that included Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Leif Garrett, C. Thomas Howell, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio and Patrick Swayze. Besides his roles in In the Custody of Strangers and The Outsiders, his credits include NBC-TV's thrillers Nightmares and Tex, the 1982 film version of another S.E. Hinton story. He bought the movie rights to a third Hinton book, That Was Then, This Is Now, and wrote the screenplay. His father predicted he would have to direct to feel the full extent of his talents, describing him as "an officer, not a soldier." After The Outsiders, Estevez appeared as the punk-rocker turned car-repossessor Otto Maddox in the film Repo Man before co-starring in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire. Following the success of these back-to-back Brat Pack films, he starred in That Was Then... This Is Now (which he co-wrote), the horror film Maximum Overdrive (for which he was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor), and the crime drama Wisdom (with fellow Brat Packer Demi Moore). Estevez was originally cast in Platoon to be Private Chris Taylor but was forced to drop out after production was delayed for two years; the role eventually went to his younger brother Charlie Sheen. He went on to lead roles in the comedy/action film Stakeout and the westerns Young Guns and Young Guns II.
In the early 1990s, Estevez directed, wrote and starred with his brother Charlie in a comedy about garbage men, Men at Work. Estevez later stated, "People come up to me on the street and say, Men at Work is the funniest movie I ever saw in my life. But, you know, I do have to question how many movies these people have seen." In 1992, Estevez found the career longevity that escaped some other Brat Packers by starring in The Mighty Ducks as Coach Gordon Bombay, a lawyer and former pee wee star and minor hockey prodigy looking to forget the past, forced into coaching a pee wee hockey team as a form of community service. The film turned out to be one of Disney's most successful franchises. It was followed by two sequels. The following year Estevez starred in three films: the dark thriller Judgment Night, the spoof comedy Loaded Weapon 1 in which his brother Charlie Sheen has a cameo and comedy/action film Another Stakeout, which was the sequel to his earlier film Stakeout.
Estevez has acted alongside his father several times. He starred in (and directed) the 1996 The War at Home in which he played Jeremy Collier, a Vietnam War veteran dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder, while Martin Sheen played his unsympathetic father Bob. Estevez appeared in an uncredited role in the feature film Mission: Impossible. From 1998 to 1999, he appeared in three television films: the spaghetti Western Dollar for the Dead (1998), the comedy Late Last Night (1999) and Rated X (2000), which he directed. In 2000, Estevez starred in the Moxie! Award-winning thriller Sand as part of an ensemble cast that also included Denis Leary, Jon Lovitz, Harry Dean Stanton and Julie Delpy. In 2003, Estevez made his voice acting debut when he helped create the English dubbed version of The 3 Wise Men with his father. Later, Estevez starred in The L.A. Riot Spectacular and voiced the English version of the film Arthur and the Invisibles. In 2008, he guest-starred on his brother's sitcom Two and a Half Men as Andy Patterson, an old friend of Charlie Sheen's character Charlie Harper. (His father Martin Sheen had also guest-starred in 2005.) In an interview a month after the tribute to John Hughes at the 82nd Academy Awards, Estevez explained his absence as publicity shyness: "I've never been a guy that went out there to get publicity on myself. I never saw the value in it." In 2017, his appearance in films was found to generate the highest return on investment (ROI) on average of all Hollywood actors. Estevez reprised his role as Coach Gordon Bombay in the 2021 Disney+ TV series, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. It was reported in November 2021 that Estevez would not return in the show's second season due to a contract dispute and creative differences.
