Charlie Sheen: 1965—: Actor

Born Carlos Irwin Estevez to Ramon (Martin Sheen) and Janet Estevez on September 3, 1965, in New York City, the ability to entertain was something that all the Estevez clan seemed to inherit. Sheen's siblings also became entertainers—Emilio Estevez and Renee Estevez were also actors and Ramon Estevez was a songwriter. The family moved to Malibu, California, when Sheen was two because Sheen's father had begun to make a movie career for himself and needed to be closer to Hollywood. Sheen became friends as a youth with such later-known actors as Sean and Christopher Penn, and Rob and Chad Lowe, and the boys were often found making home movies rather than the other things young boys are wont to do. He made his screen debut at age nine in 1974 in The Execution of Private Slovik, a movie which starred his father, Martin Sheen. He was also seen as an extra in Martin Scorcese's Apocalypse Now, a movie his father also starred in. The movie made a lasting impression on Sheen because the whole family moved to the Philippines during filming. They had to suffer through typhoons and other natural problems, and then his father, Martin, suffered a near-fatal heart attack while filming the movie. Even with all these issues the experience left him with a positive view of the movie-making business.

Growing up Sheen was involved in various drama clubs, but it was baseball in which he really excelled. He went to baseball camp for four summers in a row and by the time he was a senior in high school he had become the lead pitcher. He was even offered a baseball scholarship by the University of Kansas, but he started skipping school and by the time his senior year ended, it was estimated that he missed two-thirds of the year. According to Hollywood.com, "The bad boy side of him also surfaced early with arrests for marijuana possession and credit card forgery coming prior to his unceremonious failure to graduate from high school." His parents were not happy with Sheen's failure to graduate—something that happened not because he wasn't good at school but because of his missed classes—and were worried when Sheen decided, rather than going back to school to get his degree, that he wanted to attempt a career as an actor. He only managed to pacify his parents with the promise that if he failed to launch a successful career soon he would return home, get his high school degree, and go on to college.

He started out making a few small movies that didn't do much to bring him to the attention of the public, but did get Sheen his Screen Actor's Guild card and some recognition by the industry. In 1985 Sheen had a daughter named Cassandra with Paula Profitt, his childhood sweetheart. They chose not to marry. In 1986, however, he played a small part in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as a rebellious boy who gave advice to Ferris Bueller's sister in jail. The part was endearing and won Sheen a lot of attention, even though it was small. It was this appearance that Oliver Stone saw that made him think that Sheen had something special and he cast him in his movie Platoon.