When I showed up for breakfast with Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez at their Toronto hotel, the Latin American immigrant who brought us coffee and pastries was clearly tickled to find out whose suite he was visiting. A few days earlier, the 71-year-old Sheen, a board member of the Screen Actors Guild and a lifelong labor activist, had been out on the sidewalk in front of the lakefront luxury hotel, walking a picket line with the union employees. (They held a one-day strike to protest what they consider unfair working conditions.)
Sheen took several minutes to talk to the guy, and ended up giving him a tip that consisted of all the Canadian money he had on him. (He wasn’t going to need it back in California.) Limousine liberalism? Maybe, but the only conclusion you can draw after meeting Sheen is that he’s insatiably interested in people. In the course of a half-hour conversation that was supposed to be about “The Way,” a spiritual-seeker road movie directed by Estevez in which Sheen stars, he asked me about my parents, my Irish ancestry, my hometown, my education and my attitudes about religion. I’ve never been so thoroughly interviewed by a girlfriend’s dad, let alone a movie star.
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