Charlie Sheen admitted he felt “betrayal” after losing a role in Born on the Fourth of July to Tom Cruise.
During a recent interview on the “In Depth with Graham Bensinger” podcast, Sheen, 60, revealed that his brother Emilio Estevez broke the news to him that Cruise, 63, had been cast in the role he was auditioning for.
At the time, Sheen had already made a name for himself after he starred in 1986’s Platoon and 1987’s Wall Street. Not being cast in Born on the Fourth of July was especially hurtful, as the 1989 movie was directed by his former collaborator Oliver Stone.
After noting that he worked with Stone, 79, and had a relationship with him, he admitted he thought the role of Sergeant Ron Kovi was his.
“Emilio, he calls me. He says, ‘Hey, man. You sitting down?’ And I think somebody died, right?” Sheen recalled. “I’m like, ‘No, what’s going on?’ He says, ‘Cruise is doing Born on the Fourth.'”
Sheen continued, “I love that Emilio thought that I needed to be seated to get news he thought was going to make me faint. I mean, what are we doing here? It’s a movie.”
The Two and a Half Men actor went on to note that it was just a role, though it didn’t mean he wasn’t upset by the news.
“Well, it was also the betrayal factor of it,” Sheen said. “So I was like, ‘Okay, 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.”
Sheen implied he got his hopes up about the role by sharing that he and Stone “had meetings” about the movie, but then he “stopped hearing from him.”
“We stopped talking about it, and I reach out to Oliver, and I’m told that he’s in Cuba. Whatever,” he said. “This is like 1988 or ’89, right? I’m like, ‘Okay, well, tell him I’m looking for him.'”
Sheen also said that he’s since come to terms with not booking the role. “You can’t lose something you never had,” he noted. “I didn’t sign a contract. There was a handshake.”
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However, Sheen did reveal that he later confronted Stone about the casting decision after he was drinking.
“I stopped in and he was there, and I was drunk enough and he was drunk enough for that thing to finally be brought up,” Sheen said. “And he was like, ‘I just felt like you didn’t have any passion for it. I felt like you lost interest.’ I was like, ‘Well, I didn’t see you. How do you know how much passion I lost or interest that evaporated if we never talked about it again?'”
Cruise was eventually nominated for an Oscar for the role, which Sheen said made it easier for him to accept that the part wasn’t right for him.
“It wasn’t like a thing where I’m going to talk s–t about him, because then you see the movie and you’re like, ‘Oh, okay. All right. He turned it into that,'” Sheen said.
He continued, “When someone gets a job and does that with it, you’re just like, of course. You don’t sit there and dissect it and like, ‘I’d have done that better.’ No, go f–k yourself. That’s a brilliant [performance] — and you should have won the freaking Oscar.”
This story was originally reported by Parade on Nov 8, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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