Speaking to The Guardian in 2011, Martin Sheen explained that he’d opted to swap out his real name, Ramon Estévez, to Martin Sheen in a bid to secure acting roles in the 1960s. “It’s difficult enough trying to get started as an actor, and my name kept throwing people — they couldn’t pronounce it,” he recounted.
Despite that, he was determined that his sons shouldn’t feel obliged to change their own birth names — and speaking to Closer Weekly in 2022, he shared that he was relieved to have gotten through to Emilio Estévez. “When he started out, his agent was advising him to change his name to Sheen, and he wouldn’t do it. And I thank God he didn’t,” he said. In an interview of his own on “Talk Stoop with Nessa,” Emilio expanded on why that was so important to his father. He explained that when his grandfather had gone to see Martin’s first Broadway play, he’d been disappointed by the Anglicized name. “My grandfather just looked up and he just shook his head … and my father saw that. And so, when I began to get into this business, we had that conversation,” he recounted.
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It’s not clear if Martin had the same conversation with Charlie Sheen, born Carlos Estévez. However, in one interview with CBC, Charlie revealed Sheen was meant honor his father’s acting legacy — especially since Emilio was already repping their family name.
