The Biography Channel - Martin Sheen Biography

He's been scooping up awards for playing President Jed Bartlett in The West Wing, but the staunch pacifist's off-screen political activism has earned him equal column inches.

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Martin Sheen
born: 03-08-1940
birth place: Dayton, Ohio, USA

Sheen's blackened face emerging from a jungle swamp was one of the iconic moments in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now'.

Much in the star's back catalogue is unmemorable...but he's had enough good moments to place him firmly in the Hollywood firmament.

Born Ramon Estevez to Irish and Galician immigrant parents, Sheen swapped country home for the bright lights of NYC, apprenticing at Judith Malina and Julian Beck's Living Theatre.

His real breakthrough came as the amoral yet charismatic killer (still his favorite part) on the run with Sissy Spacek, in Terrence Malick's 'Badlands', in 1973.

Sheen then concentrated on small screen projects, before returning to the fray as the military assassin sent to terminate the command of a crazed Marlon Brando, in Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now', in 1979, that remains his signature role.

Sheen rebounded from a heart-attack, while filming, with a renewed sense of what is important in life. He donated his $200,000 salary for his three weeks' work on 'Gandhi' to various charities, and his meeting with Mother Teresa, while filming in India, restored him to the active Catholicism of his youth.

Some of his more memorable work continued to develop his politician's persona' like his creepy turn as the villainous populist of David Cronenberg's, 'The Dead Zone'.

Sheen acted in many features during the 1990s, but his work for the small screen is what really stood out. 'Badlands' and 'Apocalypse Now' not withstanding, his legacy may well be as a TV actor, most recently as US President Josiah Bartlet, in 'The West Wing'.

He picked up six Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in the Oval Office, in addition to a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in TV-Drama, and two SAG Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series.