This article originally appeared in the May 2002 issue of Architectural Digest.
The neighborhood is very hoity-toi-ty," confides actor Martin Sheen, a tireless activist for liberal causes who, although he’s now making millions playing the part of President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet on NBC’s The West Wing, doesn’t waste time pretending this was always the case. “No one wanted this house.”
Which is precisely why he bought it. For one thing, seven years ago, when he made the deal, it was actually affordable: For all the glory of its location—a gorgeous, woody canyon in Santa Monica—this 60-year-old cottage wasn’t particularly impressive. “It looked like Li’l Abner’s shack hanging on the side of a hill,” as Sheen puts it.
For another, the house’s humbler qualities sat well with a man who, although he’s been world famous since starring in Apocalypse Now in 1979, remains stunningly down-to-earth. So much so that, not long ago, he contributed a pair of his boxer shorts to an auction benefiting the homeless. And until his shooting schedule for The West Wing (which, at 22 episodes a year, is “a grind,” he says) made doing so impossible, he spent one day a week washing dishes at a local soup kitchen.
When he bought the place, Sheen planned not to renovate it at all. “I said, ‘We can’t afford to do anything with this joint. It’s just going to be a cubbyhole, a temporary thing, right?’” His wife, Janet, an artist who’s prone to decorating, concurred. “I agreed totally,” she recalls with a sly smile. “Just as I always do. But then I do what I want.” Working with an old friend, designer Barbara O ’Kun, she renovated the house from top to bottom, creating a part-time residence that’s homey yet full of whimsy and fun. For his part, Sheen took his wife’s rebellion in stride. “I said, ‘You know she’s an artist, my wife. Let her have it! This is her artistic expression.’”
Janet Sheen and her husband, originally named Ramon Estevez, moved to the West Coast from New York City around 1970—“We lived in every borough but Queens,” Martin Sheen says. “We kept moving around and getting evicted”—when, thanks to some well-timed residuals from an Alka-Seltzer commercial, they bought a ranch-style house in Malibu where they still spend most of their time. There, they raised their very own show business dynasty in the form of four multitalented children: Ramon Estevez, a producer, and three actors—Charlie Sheen, of television’s Spin City, Emilio Estevez and Renee Estevez, who’s a frequent guest on The West Wing.
Sheen calls the couple’s Malibu house “my favorite place in the world.” As the years have gone by, though, it’s become increasingly remote. By the time the stormy winter of 1995 came along, Sheen’s commutes to various studios by way of Pacific Coast Highway, with its eternal mud slides, chaotic traffic and everything else, had become downright perilous. “If my call is at seven and if I’m not on that highway by ten of six, it’s just a traffic jam all the way through,” he says. A Santa Monica pied-a-terre seemed like the perfect solution. Sheen, who was filming The American President when he bought it, loved the idea of having a spot where he could cool out, read, and study his lines. The fact that you can glimpse both mountains and ocean through its windows didn’t hurt: “Every where you look, it’s a very relaxing view.”
The house’s narrow, art-lined study turned out to be an excellent location for keeping up with what he calls his “social justice work,” dedicated to such issues as home lessness, nuclear testing and the plight of farmworkers. Sheen’s protests—all peaceful, he insists—have resulted in his being arrested 64 times at last count, most recently for taking part in an anti-“Star W ars” missile defense demonstration at Vandenberg Air Force Base. (He’s now on pro bation for trespassing.)
With her husband distracted by work and politics, Janet Sheen took on the house. “Nothing was here,” she says. “It was a little hole in the wall.” She, O ’Kun and architect Carl Volante re-created it, transforming a porch into a pantry, adding French windows and rebuilding the kitchen and two baths. The changes were so extensive, she says, that “it’s basically a brand-new house within the foot print of the old one.”
To say it was a family project would be a gross exaggeration. “I didn’t have a chance,” Martin Sheen says in mock exasperation. “Janet would run stuff by me, but she never stopped long enough to hear my opinion.” He may roll his eyes when he talks about his wife and O ’Kun— “They’re two thieves!” he exclaims—but you know he doesn’t mean it. The Sheens have one of the longer and happier marriages to be found in Hollywood, and their mutual affection is obvious.
For O ’Kun, her friends’ new home was a chance to have fun. “I try to put particularly interesting objects in houses. I always look for the unusual,” says the designer (who’s also working on the interiors of a town house for Charlie Sheen). She and Janet Sheen filled it with warm, cottagey furniture and accessories, including lots of bright textiles and such unusual touches as, in the dining room, a small Mexican santo playfully ensconced in an antique birdcage. Some pieces came from their own collections, including the living room’s striking antique marble fireplace, which had long been stashed in the Sheens’garage.
“When I got going, there was no stopping me,” asserts Janet Sheen, who was inspired by a small Paris hotel that she and her husband favor. “I tried to copy that feeling, elegant and small and cozy and colorful.” There are some fine pieces here, including an antique French carved wood bed in the guest room, and some wonderful castoffs too, such as the living room’s floral-patterned Chinese rug, which Janet Sheen had bought for Emilio. Even the artwork has a vintage feel, from the 1940s landscapes (by local artist Ralph Holmes) in the living room to an anonymous portrait of a small girl, in the dining room, which Sheen says reminds him of his daughter. “It’s like she posed for it,” he says.
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Modestly, he insists that his sole contribution was to request a ceiling fan for the upstairs den. That said, though, the influence of this erudite yet playful man—a staunch Roman Catholic and former altar boy who startles visitors by reciting whole portions of the Mass in Latin—is everywhere, from a volume of Yeats’s poems on his marble-topped desk to the latest West Wing script, tossed off handedly onto a kitchen counter. He concedes that he’s pleased with the final result. “Like a lot of lugs who are married to very artistic people, I know it when I see it, but I don’t know how you get there.”
As for future residences, the couple say they’re devoted to their house in Malibu and don’t ever plan to leave. And there’s one place in particular where Sheen hopes never to reside. At his last trial the judge announced he was running out of patience: One more arrest, he told the actor, and his next residence would have bars on its windows. “I’ll go right to jail,” Sheen says soberly. “I won’t pass go. It could take the wind out of my sails.” Even so, it’s unlikely that he’ll ease up on his political work. At least not in a world where people live on the street, where nuclear arms proliferate and where, any day now, there might be oil rigs in the Arctic. “I’m as active as I ever was,” the actor admits. “But I have to be careful.”
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