Martin Sheen Says He Regrets Changing His Spanish Surname

Martin Sheen has had a career enviable to many, but he mentioned recently that he now regrets performing for so many years with an anglicized name instead of his birth name. Sheen was born Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez to a Spanish immigrant father and Irish immigrant mother and said it is one of his regrets in a recent interview that he didn’t use that name for his acting career.

Sheen brought up the name change in an interview with Closer Weekly while discussing his actor children. “The only influence I had on Emilio was to keep his name,” he said. “When he started out, his agent was advising him to change his name to Sheen and he wouldn’t do it. and Thank God he didn’t.”

He explained that the name change was “one of my regrets,” in his career. “I never changed my name officially. It’s still Ramon Estévez on my birth certificate. It’s on my marriage license, my passport, driver’s license. Sometimes you get persuaded when you don’t have enough insight or even courage to stand up for what you believe in, and you pay for it later.”

The actor also revealed that one of his favorite movie roles was an homage to his Spanish father and directed by his son. The film, titled The Way from 2010, is “about the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and dedicated it to my father, who was from Galicia.”