Emilio Estevez reveals that Laurence Fishburne saved his life on set of ‘Apocalypse Now’
During a recent appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show, actor Emilio Estevez recalled his time visiting his father, Martin Sheen, on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. He revealed that his father’s co-star Laurence Fishburne saved him from drowning in quicksand while they were on location in the Philippines.
Estevez explained: “He says, ‘Hey there’s this little boat, let’s go out on it.’ I said, ‘Sure.’ We were both 14 at the time. So we were out on this boat together, and we started getting too close to the shore and I said, ‘Well, let me jump out, I’ll push us offshore. I jumped out, and it was like quicksand mud.”
“I was sinking, and I just saw Fishburne just looking at me going, ‘Grab my hand!’ and he pulled me back onto the boat. We were bonded ever since,” he continued.
According to Sheen, when he discovered that Fishburne saved his son’s life a few decades later, he reached out to him, “I called Mr. Fishburne to thank him for saving my son’s life.”
The set of Apocalypse Now was infamously chaotic, leading some to believe it was cursed. During filming, Sheen suffered a near-fatal heart attack despite only being 36.
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