"I thought somebody died": Charlie Sheen recalls moment brother Emilio Estevez told him Tom Cruise took his role in Born on the Fourth of July

In the October 29, 2025, edition of In Depth with Graham Bensinger, Charlie Sheen recounted the moment he learned that the movie role he had been anticipating was given to Tom Cruise.

Charlie, who had worked with director Oliver Stone on hits Platoon and Wall Street, claimed that the latter had agreed that he would star in his movie Born on the Fourth of July. The film is based on the Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic.

The Two and a Half Men actor thought things were going according to plan until he received a call from his brother Emilio Estevez. He felt that someone had died when his brother confirmed that he was sitting before breaking the news:

"Emilio, he calls me. He says, 'Hey, man. You sitting down?' And I think somebody died, right?  "I'm like, ‘No, what's going on?" He says, ‘Cruise is doing Born on the Fourth.’"

The actor added that he found it amusing that his brother had thought he would faint over the news.

"I love that Emilio thought that I needed to be seated to get news he thought was going to make me faint," Sheen said. "I mean, what are we doing here? It's a movie."

“Well, it was also the betrayal part of it,” Charlie Sheen recalls how he felt when he lost the lead role in Born on the Fourth

Charlie Sheen, who had worked with Tom Cruise in The Outsiders, told Bensinger that while he wouldn’t have fainted over losing a role, he felt betrayed by Director Oliver Stone.

"It's a big deal. Well, it was also the betrayal factor of it. So I was like, 'OK, all right.' You know, Oliver's been a fan of Tom's for a long time. It's a different movie if Tom does it than if I do it."

Charlie claimed that he had meetings with Oliver Stone about the role and even had dinner with Ron Kovic, on whom the movie was based. He stated that he later got over losing the project, as no formal contract was made.
 

He later confronted Stone in a bar, and the latter explained that he gave the role to Cruise because he felt that Charlie had lost interest in it. 

Charlie, however, commended Tom Cruise’s performance in the movie, adding that the Mission Impossible actor deserved an Oscar.