Charlie kind of backed into it. He was on the baseball team, and he was very good, but he wasn’t doing his studies. He was ill disciplined, so he got kicked off the team. Charlie really wanted to get back on the team, because they were going into the playoffs, so I went down to speak to the teacher, and he said, ‘Don’t do this to him. You’ll only make things worse. Don’t support him.’

So I was forced to see a side of Charlie that I’d blinkered up until then. So then, as a second thought, he took himself off for an audition and he got the part!

I saw him in something and remember knowing that he too knew what he was doing. Then we did a little scene together in a show and he did it so well. The other kids came across in the same way, although not as intense.

- How does Charlie’s current behaviour affect your faith?

I include Charlie in my prayers. I always lift him up. I know the hell he lives in, because I was there.

So I’m extremely compassionate and understanding. The key is on the inside; you can’t force anyone to do anything, good or ill, without their allowing you in. We’ve been through some very difficult times, but we understand what Charlie’s hell is.

- Ramon, another of your sons, worked with you on The West Wing

Ramon had studied dance and singing and he wrote songs and had a professional song-writing partner in Tennessee. 

His heart wasn’t in acting, though he loved the business, so he’d work as my assistant very often. And yes, he was my assistant on The West Wing and after that we formed a production company together, ESP, Estevez Sheen Productions, and he was in the office.

Then when The West Wing came to an end, my contract with WB was up and I had to leave the lot. But Charlie was still there at WB, so he took things over and the two of them worked together.

- You knew The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin from American President, but did you expect the show to do as well as it did?

I knew Aaron was good, and I had just a few small scenes in the pilot, but I knew it was a special show. We all did, but we didn’t have the confidence of it working on a commercial station; we thought it belonged on cable, because our show was not going to be selling cars or placing products.

That was the big surprise. We didn’t think it was commercial. It was so non-commercial, and we started in 1999, before Bush. The first two years we were on the air, then he stole the office, was made President and that was the most difficult time for us, because we were so diametrically opposed, so in a sense we were a parallel universe, how things could be.

We dealt with the same domestic and international issues as the real President’s office, and this Bartlett guy came from a moral frame of reference. He was Catholic and didn’t separate that from his office.

He didn’t go and start a war with someone just to prove to his father that he is a man, which is what our idiot did. If you removed Bush from that office and looked at what we did, what would he be? A mass murderer.

- Did you always take your children away on location with you, like to Mexico for Catch-22 and the Philippines for Apocalypse Now?

They came away with me a lot, especially when they were little and didn’t really have a lot of say in the matter. I just grabbed them out of school and took them to some pretty remote places.

I did that quite often and we would get right into the community. Going to Mexico was memorable. We just left a blizzard in New York City then we were in San Bernado desert, and the boys would bring home kids from the fishing village. I remember one night Ramone disappeared during this huge carnivale.

Here we are in a foreign country and I’ve lost one of my kids! We looked everywhere and then I found a kid, Manuel, from the community and he went and found Ramone for me. That was a crazy time.

The Way is in cinemas on 13th May.

To find out more on THE WAY visit the official site  http://www.theway-themovie.com/

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