Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez: a Tale of Two Drastically Different Brothers
Charlie Sheen makes fun of his older brother on his live tour.
April 12, 2011 — -- Born into a show biz family and both of them Hollywood regulars, they could've been a dynamic duo, like Ben and Casey Affleck or Luke and Owen Wilson.
Instead, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez have gone down dramatically different paths, and it's hard to see them sharing the same screen or state of mind anytime soon.
Sheen has poked fun at his older brother in his latest live shows. At his "My Violent Torpedo of Truth" spiel at New York's Radio City Music Hall Friday, the former "Two and a Half Men" star invoked Estevez's name to rile up the crowd.
"Emilio, is that you?" Sheen called out from the stage. The audience broke into a chorus of "quacks," a dig at Estevez's role in the "Mighty Ducks" movies. Sheen quipped, "I told you to ban him."
(Maybe Sheen was insulting his family in an effort to up the enthusiasm for his show. Tickets for tonight's show in Boston, Mass. are going for as little as $10 on the reselling site StubHub.com. In any case, Estevez declined to comment on Sheen's slight through his publicist.)
Even before Estevez became a punch line in Sheen's routine, the brothers weren't on the best of terms. When Sheen went on a downward spiral following his January hiatus from "Two and a Half Men," talking about his cocaine binges and harem of "goddesses" to anyone who would listen, Estevez stayed tight-lipped.
As speculation swirled about whether Sheen's antics would result in his untimely death, Estevez and their father, Martin Sheen, happened to be working on a film about a dad dealing with his son's untimely death. "The Way" stars Martin Sheen; Estevez serves as director and co-star.
While promoting "The Way," the two sat down with the U.K. newspaper The Telegraph. Estevez admitted that he's never been able to understand his brother's bad behavior. He noted that they and their siblings, Renee and Ramon Estevez, were "raised under the same roof" in Malibu, Calif. and "we all had the same set of rules."
Estevez suggested that Sheen's substance abuse issues pulled them apart. "It really gives credence to this theory that [substance abuse] is genetic," he said, "and that sometimes it skips either a generation or siblings."
It's a change from the way they were. Sheen, 45, and Estevez, 48, developed a camaraderie because of their careers. Both became stars quickly -- Estevez in 1985 with" The Breakfast Club" and "St Elmo's Fire," Sheen in 1986 with "Platoon" and the following year with "Wall Street."
As members of Hollywood's "Brat Pack," they also partied hard. Estevez lost his virginity at age 14 while in the Philippines, where his dad was filming "Apocalypse Now." Sheen lost his at 15, paying for a prostitute with his father's credit card.
But by 1988, when they shared the screen in "Young Guns," a divide had formed. Estevez's 1986 movie, "Wisdom," fell flat while Sheen's star rose from his roles in Oliver Stone films. His addiction problems soon became apparent, too. Sheen first checked into rehab in 1990; Estevez, meanwhile, dabbled in directing and landed his signature role as Coach Gordon Bombay in the "Mighty Ducks" series of movies.
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Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez: Brothers Battle
Because of their shared past, Estevez doubts his ability to help his brother.
"All I can do for Charlie, and I can't live his life for him, is to try to be an example," he said in an interview with Britain's Sunday Times last month. "But, really, I was a pretty poor one. As a kid, I was smart enough to be surreptitious about all my misbehavior, or at least stealthy. But it means that my opinions carry little weight with Charlie."
Perhaps Estevez has adopted the same attitude to his younger brother as their parents did to their four children. In his interview with the Telegraph, Estevez described how his mom and dad let him run wild on the set of "Apocalypse Now," figuring that if he went off the deep end, they had enough kids around to make up for the loss.
"'My father and mother, neither of them cared if Larry Fishburne [Martin Sheen's teenage co-star] and I jumped in a jitney and went to Manila for the weekend," he said. "President Marcos was in power, martial law was in effect, and you were shot on sight if you were seen on the street after 1am. What were they thinking?'"
Estevez said he recently asked his parents that question: "Their reply was, 'We had four of you. If we had to lose one, we would. We were just trying to survive.'"