It's still Ramon Estévez on my birth certificate. We had some very, very painful confrontations about it.”īut while his father would eventually begin taking his acting aspirations seriously, Sheen said that Americanizing his name in order to pursue those dreams is “one of my regrets.” He added, “I never changed my name officially. He was a factory worker for most of his adult life, and he wanted me to go to college and improve my chances of making a better living than he did. “My father was from Spain, and my mother was from Ireland. Both my parents were immigrants,” the actor explained. He explained that his father never wanted him to go into show business, but “You couldn’t blame him. Sheen had his first breakout role in the 1968 production of Hamlet in New York City. The actor told Closer Weekly on Saturday that he wishes he'd gone by Ramon Estévez instead of changing his name when launching his career. Martin Sheen confessed that if he could do it all over again, he'd go by his birth name professionally.
