Emilio Estevez Says Laurence Fishburne Saved Him From Drowning at 14: “We Were Bonded Ever Since”

Laurence Fishburne saved Emilio Estevez from drowning in quicksand when they were both 14 years old.

The actors were on location in the Philippines for Apocalypse Now. Estevez was not in the film, but his father, Martin Sheen, was. At the time, Sheen would travel with his family on long shoots in faraway places, so that they could remain close — physically and emotionally.

“We’d only known each other a couple of days,” Estevez said of Fishburne on The Jennifer Hudson Show Tuesday, where he made an appearance alongside his father. “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.”

He continued, “I was just 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.”

Sheen told the daytime talk show host that he never found out about the near-death incident that took place near the set of one of his films until decades later when he read about it in his and Estevez’s memoir, Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son.

When he found out, Sheen reached out to Fishburne directly: “I called Mr. Fishburne to thank him for saving my son’s life.”

Fishburne was only 14 when he began work on Apocalypse Now in 1976, the young actor having lied about his age to get the part. Director Francis Ford Coppola had assumed Fishburne was 16, although his character, Clean, was 18 years old in the script.