Emmy Award-winning American actor Martin Sheen was born on August 3, 1940 in Dayton, Ohio. The son of Spanish and Irish immigrants, his father was a machinery inspector while his mother fled her home country due to her family’s connections to the IRA. He was raised a Roman Catholic Christian, and studied at the Chaminade High School. He claims that in order to pursue his acting career in defiance of his father, he deliberately flunked the University of Dayton entrance exam, then adopted his stage name in honor of the theologian Fulton Sheen. He later went on to act in various productions such as the TV show The Outer Limits and the Broadway play The Subject Was Roses. He is also the father of actors Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez.
Dr. Josiah “Jed” Bartlet is played by Martin Sheen in the Emmy Award-winning television drama series The West Wing. A devout Roman Catholic, he was eligible for Harvard and Yale, though he chose to attend the University of Notre Dame instead. After graduating summa cum laude with a B.A. in American Studies, he later went on to earn his Master’s and Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics. Before embarking on his political campaign, he was a tenured economics professor at Dartmouth College, and he is eventually elected President of the United States.
(Photo courtesy of James Sorenson)