Martin Sheen Recalls Laurence Fishburne Saving Emilio Estevez's Life While Filming Apocalypse Now

Martin Sheen recalled the time Laurence Fishburne saved one of his children.

During an interview with Daily Blast Live on Monday, the actor discussed how Fishburne kept Emilio Estevez from drowning while they were out on a boat together in the Philippines during the filming of 1979's "Apocalypse Now."

"We didn't know about it until about 30 years later," Sheen explained. "Emilio never mentioned it, but yeah it's true. I think Emilio was about 12 or 13, and Larry was 14."

The "Mighty Ducks" alum had come to visit his father on set of the Francis Ford Coppola classic, where Sheen played the lead role of Captain Benjamin Willard alongside Fishburne's Tyrone "Mr. Clean" Miller.

"They became fast friends and they were out in the boat one day and the boat got stuck, and Emilio got out of the boat to clear the area and he began to sink into the mud and he went under, and Larry very quickly moved and pulled him on board."

"I called Laurence and said, 'Thank you, I appreciate you saving our son's life," Sheen added with a laugh.

Sheen had spoken of the incident back in 2012 during a discussion with the Hudson Union Society, reiterating the fact that Emilio hadn't revealed the story to his family for years.

"He never mentioned it, nor did Laurence. This knowledge had never, ever been known to us," Sheen said at the time. "But he pulled him out from a lake. I need to thank Laurence for that because it was a very good thing to do and it grew to be very profitable as well."

Another interesting tidbit about Fishburne working on "Apocalypse Now": the actor was only 14 when he started, but by the time production wrapped and the movie debuted, he was the same age as his 17-year-old character.

"That movie was really the beginning of me thinking of myself as an artist," Fishburne told the AP in 2018. "It was the beginning of my understanding of cinema, it was the beginning of my understanding of the world, because I was suddenly taken out of Brooklyn and I was in the Philippines in the middle of Asia."

"My work with Francis on 'Apocalypse Now' and all the films I did afterward with him really shaped me and formed me as an artist."