British postcard by Santoro Graphics, London, no. C 289.
British postcard by Athena International, no. 0334313. Photo: Morgan Creek Productions Inc.Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, Dermot Mulroney and Casey Siemaszko in Young Guns (Christopher Cain, 1988).
Leader of the Pack
Emilio Estevez was born on Staten Island, New York City, in 1962. He was the oldest child of artist Janet Sheen and actor Martin Sheen (legally Ramón Estévez). His siblings are Ramon Estevez, Charlie Sheen (birth name Carlos Estévez), and Renée Estevez, all of whom became actors. Estevez initially attended school in the New York 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. As teens, he and future stars Rob Lowe, Chad Lowe, Chris Penn, and Sean Penn were close friends. They used to act, write, produce, and direct movies together. Estevez appeared in Meet Mr. Bomb, a short anti-nuclear power film produced at his high school. He had a bit part in the crime film Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973), starring his father and Sissy Spacek. At 14, he accompanied his father to the Philippines, where Sheen was shooting Apocalypse Now (Francis Coppola, 1979). Estevez was an extra in the classic film about the Vietnam War, 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 realise: my God, he's one of us."
After graduating from Santa Monica High in 1980, Estevez refused to go to college and instead went into acting. Unlike his brother Charlie, Estevez did not adopt their father's stage name, hoping to avoid riding his father's coattails. His 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 theatre in Jupiter, Florida. He made his big-screen debut opposite Matt Dillon in Tex (Tim Hunter, 1982), based on a novel by S.E. Hinton. Estevez received much attention during the 1980s for being a member of the Brat Pack and was credited as the leader of this group of young actors. Estevez and Rob Lowe established the Brat Pack when cast as supporting 'Greasers' in The Outsiders (Francis Coppola, 1983), also based on a S.E. Hinton novel and also starring Matt Dillon. Lowe was cast as C. Thomas Howell's older brother Sodapop and Estévez as the drunken Two-Bit Matthews. During production, he approached his character as a laid-back guy and thought up Two-Bit's interest in Mickey Mouse, shown by his uniform of Mickey Mouse T-shirts and watching cartoons.
After The Outsiders, Estevez made a big splash as the punk-rocker turned car-repossessor Otto Maddox in the cult film Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984). Then he co-starred as Andrew (The Athlete) in the seminal Brat Pack flick The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985) and its successor St. Elmo's Fire (John Hughes, 1985). The other original members of the Brat Pack were Judd Nelson, Sean Penn, Anthony Michael Hall, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy and Andrew McCarthy. Following the success of these back-to-back John Hughes films, he made his screenwriting debut with That Was Then, This Is Now (Christopher Cain, 1985), a sequel to The Outsiders and again based on an S.E. Hinton novel. He also co-starred in the film. He was then nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for the Science Fiction-Horror comedy Maximum Overdrive (Stephen King, 1986), which received overwhelmingly negative reviews.
He had his filmmaking debut with the romantic crime drama Wisdom (Emilio Estevez, 1986) with fellow Brat Packer Demi Moore. It made Estevez the youngest person to ever write, direct, and star in a single major film. However, the film was universally panned and struck out at the box office. Estevez was originally cast in Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986) 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. Estevez rebounded with lead roles in the comedy/action film Stakeout (John Badham, 1987) with Richard Dreyfuss, and the Westerns Young Guns (Christopher Cain, 1988) and its sequel Young Guns II (Geoff Murphy, 1990), in which he co-starred with Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Philips and his brother Charlie Sheen. Young Guns is a historically accurate retelling of the adventures of Billy the Kid. It opened no. 1 at the box office, eventually earning $45 million from a moderate $11 million budget.
British postcard by TV Hits. Sent by mail in 1992. The Bratpack: Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, River Phoenix, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim.
Australian postcard by TV Hits. Photo: N. Moran / Sygma / Austral International. Photo: Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise in The Outsiders (Francis Coppola, 1983).
Vintage postcard, no. FA 240. Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985).
A film which took over six years to write
In the early 1990s, Emilio Estevez directed, wrote, and co-starred with his brother Charlie in a comedy about garbagemen, Men at Work (Emilio Estevez, 1990). In 1992, he found the career longevity that escaped other Brat Packers by starring in The Mighty Ducks (Stephen Herek, 1992) as Coach Gordon Bombay, a lawyer and former pee wee star and minor hockey prodigy looking to forget the past. He is 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 and was followed by two sequels. The following year, Estevez starred in three films: the dark action thriller Judgment Night (Stephen Hopkins, 1993), the spoof comedy Loaded Weapon 1 (Gene Quintano, 1993) with Samuel L. Jackson, and the comedy/action film Another Stakeout (John Badham, 1993), the less successful sequel to Stakeout.
He agreed to make a brief appearance in D3: The Mighty Ducks (Robert Lieberman, 1996) in exchange for Disney helping him finance and distribute another effort as actor-director, The War at Home (Emilio Estevez, 1996). In the film, he played a Vietnam War veteran dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder, while Martin Sheen played his unsympathetic father. Though smiled on by critics, The War at Home (1996) received a paltry distribution by Disney and thus went largely unseen. A devastated Estevez considered quitting the business. He guest-starred in one episode of the TV series The West Wing (2003) as a younger version of his father's character (Jed Bartlet). Estevez appeared in an uncredited role in the feature film Mission: Impossible (Brian de Palma, 1996), starring Tom Cruise.
He directed and starred opposite his brother Charlie in the TV film Rated X (Emilio Estevez, 2000). It chronicles the story of the Mitchell brothers, Jim and Artie, who were pioneers in the pornography and strip club businesses in San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s. The production was selected for the Sundance Film Festival. Estevez starred in the thriller Sand (Matt Palmieri, 2000) as part of an ensemble cast that also included Denis Leary, Harry Dean Stanton, and Julie Delpy. In 2003, he made his voice acting debut with the English dubbed version, The 3 Wise Men, of the Spanish animation film Los Reyes Magos (Antonio Navarro, 2003) with his father. Later, Estevez starred in The L.A. Riot Spectacular (Marc Klasfeld, 2005), a satirical film about the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
In 2008, he guest-starred on his brother's sitcom Two and a Half Men as an old friend of Charlie Sheen's character. Aside from acting, Estevez directed episodes of the television series Cold Case, Close to Home, The Guardian, CSI: NY and Numb3rs. In 2006, he directed the film Bobby, which took over six years to write. The screenplay is a fictionalised account of the hours leading up to the June 5, 1968, shooting of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles following his win of the 1968 Democratic presidential primary in California. Producing the film nearly bankrupted Estevez, as the domestic box office gross was not able to cover production costs. The film won a Hollywood Film Award and received a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.
Five years later, he directed his father in The Way (Emilio Estevez, 2011), a story about a man who decides to make the Camino de Santiago in Spain after the death of his son in the French Pyrénées. In 2018, Estevez wrote, directed and played in The Public (Emilio Estevez, 2018), starring Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater. The film about caring for the homeless premiered at the at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. Emilio Estevez dated Mimi Rogers from 1981 to 1982 and served as best man at her 1987 wedding to Tom Cruise. He was in a relationship with Carey Salley, a Wilhelmina model, until they broke up in 1986. They have a son, Taylor Levi Estevez (1984), and a daughter, Paloma Rae Estevez (1986). In 1992, Estevez married singer-choreographer Paula Abdul. They divorced in 1994, with Abdul later stating that she wanted children and Estevez, who already had two children, did not. He was also briefly engaged to actress Demi Moore, and they remain good friends. The two starred as a feuding married couple in Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006), alongside Moore's real-life husband at the time, Ashton Kutcher.
French poster card by Première, 1989. Image: Morgan Creek / Star Production. French poster with Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, Dermot Mulroney and Casey Siemaszko in Young Guns (Christopher Cain, 1988).
French poster card by Editions Avant Garde, no. P1239. Poster: Morgan Creek Entertainment / 20th Century Fox. Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips and Christian Slater in Young Guns II (Geoff Murphy, 1990). Caption: The West just got wilder.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
No comments:
Post a Comment