Charlie Sheen Felt Betrayed 35 Years Ago When This Top Director Ghosted Him for New Film

Platoon, which won four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, remains one of the finest war films ever made nearly four decades after its release. It attracted nearly three million viewers in France alone and stands as a seminal work on the Vietnam War, a never-ending source of inspiration for American cinema. The film was also a pivotal part of Charlie Sheen’s turbulent career.

Sheen was recently featured on the program In Depth With Graham Bensinger, where he spent nearly two hours discussing the highs and lows of his career. During the interview, he talked about missing out on the lead role in Born on the Fourth of July, Stone’s second film about the Vietnam War, which ultimately helped Tom Cruise earn his first Oscar nomination.

One can only imagine Sheen’s disappointment, given his stellar performance in Platoon and his lead role in Wall Street.

“It felt like you had no passion for it”

Sheen had no clue that Stone was considering a change until his brother, Emilio Estevez, called him out of the blue one evening (via Entertainment Weekly). “He said, ‘Hey, man. Are you sitting down?’ And I thought someone had died, right?” Sheen recounted. “I said, ‘No, what’s up?’ He said, ‘Cruise is going to be in Born on the Fourth of July.’ I love that Emilio thought I needed to be sitting down for news he believed would knock me over. I mean, come on, it’s just a movie.”

Still, the news hit him hard. “There was also a feeling of betrayal. So I thought, ‘Okay, fine.’ You know, Oliver has been a fan of Tom for a long time. It’s not the same movie if it’s Tom doing it or if it’s me.”

Sheen mentioned that he found out about Cruise’s casting after he had “meetings” about the film with Stone, and they had even dined with the real Ron Kovic. “Then I never heard from him again. We stopped talking about it, I reached out to Oliver, and was told he was in Cuba. Whatever. It was around 1988 or 1989. I was like, ‘Okay, tell him I’m looking for him.'”

It was much later that Sheen finally confronted Stone about the issue when they were at the same bar. “I was pretty drunk, and so was he, enough for the subject to finally come up. And he said, ‘I just felt like you had no passion for it. I felt like you had lost all interest.’ I responded, ‘Well, I didn’t see you. How can you judge how much passion or interest I lost if we never talked about it again?'”

“He should have won that damn Oscar”

Sheen holds no grudge against Tom Cruise, quite the contrary. “It wasn’t as though I was going to speak ill of him, because then you see the film and you think, ‘Oh, okay. Alright. He transformed it into that.’ When someone gets a role and delivers that kind of performance, you just think, ‘Of course,’ it’s obvious. You don’t sit there analyzing and thinking, ‘I could have done better.’ It was a brilliant performance, and he should have won that damn Oscar.”

Stone indeed had a keen eye in choosing Cruise for the lead role in his film. “I thought he was the best of his generation for that role. He’s the ideal son of all Americans,” he said. “The journey he undertakes in the film is even more powerful when it’s undertaken by the star of Top Gun. It’s not just Ron going through this horrible ordeal, it’s Tom Cruise – our perception of Tom Cruise.”

The actor was so convinced by the film that he agreed to lower his fee, which had soared since Top Gun. “I felt it was a very strong script and a magnificent character,” he said.

“For me, the key to portraying Ron Kovic is to never give up and to seek the truth. The film is not about a man in a wheelchair. It’s about a country that had become disabled. It was about transcending the personal story of this man; it’s about his personal triumph.”

Cruise’s commitment to the role was admirable, unwavering. “My first meeting with him surprised me,” Kovic recounted. “He came to my home with Oliver. I was surprised by how well he understood everything I had been through. Tom was very clear with me: he said he would put all his guts into the film, and he would not let me down.”

Ironically, it was announced last June that Tom Cruise would receive an honorary Oscar next November, the first of his career. A well-deserved award for his admirable portrayal in Oliver Stone’s masterpiece.