Along the Way

by Martin Sheen

  “Of course I’m interested,” I said. “When can I read the script?”

  But the overseas telephone connection was very poor and before I could get any more information the line went dead. I tried but couldn’t get another connection through to the States. Oh, well, I figured. I guess it can wait. So I was caught by surprise when Emilio and I walked through our front door in Malibu a few weeks later to find an equally surprised Janet saying, “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on the way to Paris for Enigma.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. I’d thought I was saying yes to an inquiry, not an offer. I hadn’t even read the script.

  “Well, the understanding is you agreed to do the film. They’re expecting you in Paris tomorrow.”

  It had been assumed that I’d agreed to what’s called a “deal memo” for the film, when an actor verbally consents to take a role. Now I had to turn around immediately and leave for France to honor a commitment I hadn’t even known I’d made.

  It was out of the question to take anyone with me on such short notice, so I didn’t ask. But I did get a promise that everyone would come visit me during the two-week Easter vacation in April, and within days I was in Paris alone. The film wasn’t particularly difficult to shoot. Locations were all in France, including Lille and Strasbourg as well as Paris, where the majority of scenes would be filmed. We worked largely during the day, with most nights off. The KGB official assigned to track down my character was played by the wonderful actor Sam Neill, long before his role in Jurassic Park. The production company had put him up at the Hotel Lenox in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood on the Left Bank, and one night he invited me over for a drink.

  “You ought to see my room. It’s just terrific,” he said. He showed me his suite on the top floors, with a little sitting room and a balcony and a cozy bedroom with a skylight upstairs.

  “This is wonderful,” I said. “I wish I had a room like this.”

  “It’s yours,” he said.

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t,” I told him, but he insisted that I take it for the remainder of the shoot.

  I was deeply moved by his generosity. I would not have been able to give up that room to anyone, for any reason. It was a magnificent retreat. Every morning I’d wake up to the light shining through the skylight and I’d call downstairs for a cappuccino, a freshly baked croissant, and the day’s copy of the International Herald Tribune. We’d film during the day, and every night after dinner I looked forward to returning to my exquisite quarters. I’d brought some books back from India about Indian culture and spirituality that I was eager to read and reflect on at home. Instead, I brought them with me to Paris and read them in bed for hours every night. One of the books was a Western interpretation of Indian thought that discussed the Eastern concept of death. The author wrote that we “wake up” in death, as if awakening from a dream in a strange place, disoriented. It takes only a few seconds to remember who and where we are, but those few seconds can feel like an eternity. That’s what happens when we die, the author wrote, and I thought about that possibility for quite a while. The idea was fascinating to me.

  One day I was walking in the neighborhood when I saw a familiar figure heading my way. Could it really be?

  “Terry, is it yourself?” I called out.

  “It is, Martin!” Terrence Malick said. “What are you doing here?”

  It had been nearly five years since I’d last seen Terry, when I was back in California after the typhoon in the middle of filming Apocalypse Now and he was in Los Angeles preparing to film Days of Heaven. In the meantime, he’d moved to Paris and married a Frenchwoman named Michelle. They were living on rue Jacob, close to my hotel. We were so glad to be reunited we began to spend evenings together after I’d finished work.

  A true intellectual, a Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Terry Malick had taught at MIT and written for the New Yorker. He spoke four languages, and I couldn’t mention a book he hadn’t read. Conversations with him were like a tutorial. Despite a great sense of humor, he was enormously private and extremely shy. For the next few months, I became his informal education project. He taught me how to use the Paris subway system and took me on tours of Ile Saint-Louis and the Ile-de-France. He introduced me to the famous English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company along the river Seine, where he plucked books off the shelves for me to read. Sometimes we’d meet at night at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the oldest church in Paris, where a group of local musicians held informal, public charismatic gatherings. Filled with the spirit, they’d sing and play guitars and pray in French in a corner of the cathedral. Terry loved hearing their beautiful voices fill that space and sometimes we would sit listening for long periods, in rapture.

  Terry knew me very well from our time together on Badlands, and I began to open up to him about what had happened in the Philippines and the experiences I’d had in India. From my journey through the last five years, it had become clear to me that we are all responsible for our own happiness—only we can choose what will make us happy, but we can’t achieve that state without living an honest life.

  Deeply spiritual, Terry was a devout Anglican and he recognized that I was going through a personal transition. Slowly, without either of us realizing it at first, he became my spiritual director. We talked about the need to live an authentic life and that the individual is the only one who truly knows when he or she is being honest or dishonest. “Our opinions of ourselves are the only ones that matter,” Terry told me.

  One day, at Shakespeare & Company, he bought me a copy of The Brothers Karamazov. A big fan of Dostoyevsky, and of this novel in particular, Terry said, “Read this book. I think it’ll have an effect on you.”

  I’d never read Dostoyevsky before, and, from the start, the story of the ethical and moral dilemmas faced by Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his sons fascinated me. I stayed up late reading every night. The book was nearly a thousand pages. Every character in that book is invested with equal measures of faith and flaw. It was very easy for me to relate to them, especially to the father. But most of all I was struck by the theme of love in the book, the message that love is not a sweet thing but a terribly painful endeavor because it requires total honesty. And yet, as Dostoevsky conveyed, love is valuable above all else.

  The company moved to Strasbourg to film for a week, and the family joined me there for the kids’ spring break. We then spent several days back in Paris before they returned home. It was a wonderful though brief reunion, and afterward I got my special room back at the Hotel Lenox for the final few weeks of filming.

  Friday, May 1, was a national holiday in France similar to our Labor Day in the United States. I woke up late beneath the skylight in my attic suite of the Hotel Lenox and somehow, I knew: This is it. Today is the day.

  St. Joseph’s Catholic Church near the Arc de Triomphe on the Avenue Hoche is a parish run by Irish Passionists, serving English-speaking Catholics in Paris. In fact, it is the only English-speaking church in all of France. American embassy personnel and other expats from the United States, Britain, and elsewhere, including a large number of Filipinos, make up the congregation. The first week I was in Paris, before I moved to the Hotel Lenox, I’d stop there occasionally for Mass or to light a candle. After I moved to the Hotel Lenox I went to Saint-Germain-des-Prés often with Terry, touching the edges of Catholicism but not quite ready to step back in.

  May first.

  I walked the three miles from the Hotel Lenox to St. Joseph’s Church as a form of pilgrimage. And when I arrived at the church around noon I banged on the front doors with urgency and purpose.

  No answer.

  I banged again, harder this time. Still no answer.

  Well, I thought, maybe this is not the day after all. So I turned and walked back down the steps, but just as I hit the sidewalk I heard the church door swing open behind me. I turned around and there he was: the Irish priest I’d seen on my occasiona
l visits. He was holding a napkin in one hand and he was chewing. I’d interrupted his lunch.

  “Yes, what is it?” he asked. He must have thought there was a riot outside from the way that I’d been banging.

  “Well, Father,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you. But I haven’t been to confession in years and I’d like to come back to the church.” His eyes narrowed, and from his reaction, I knew I’d come to the right place.

  “Well,” he said. “Come back here tomorrow morning at ten. And don’t be late. I have a wedding at noon.”

  “I will,” I said.

  The next morning, when I walked into the church, I was the only one present. This confession was by appointment. I’d had the last rites after the heart attack in the Philippines and received Communion but I couldn’t confess then because the priest spoke only Tagalog. I hadn’t been to confession in a dozen years or so but the process was still very familiar and, when the time came, I entered the confessional box and began.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  Then I unburdened a heavy load from my soul. Father listened patiently and gave me some spiritual advice. Then he gave me a penance before absolution.

  “For your penance, say one Our Father,” he said.

  “One Our Father?” I asked. “Just one?”

  “Have you been gone so long,” asked the priest, “that you can’t remember the Our Father?”

  “No, I remember it.” I laughed. I just hadn’t expected the penance to be so light for someone who’d been gone as long as I had, and who’d accumulated so much to confess in the interim.

  I left the confessional booth and sat down in a pew to reflect. I had just confessed the whole truth about the past dozen years of my life and absolution was graciously granted without hesitation or judgment. Gradually, an overwhelming sense of freedom and familiarity consumed my whole being. I had returned whence I’d come. I imagined the Prodigal Son might have felt the same way when, as the Gospel parable tells us, he returned from his wayward travels rehearsing lines of apology, only to be greeted by a father who loved him so unconditionally the son was welcomed with open arms, no questions asked and no judgment passed.

  I’d just taken the first step of a long, complex spiritual journey that would change my life. But I wasn’t focused on the future now, only on this transcendent moment. Sitting alone in that church I began to weep uncontrollably with tears of sheer joy.

  In my absence from the church, Vatican II had made some extraordinary changes begun by Pope John XXIII in 1962. Church dogma and canon law were still intact, of course, but gone was the Latin Mass and many of the fear-based traditions of hellfire and damnation. Gone, too, were many of the ancient barriers that separated Catholicism from other faiths and traditions. Good riddance, I thought.

  I don’t know how long I sat sobbing in the pew, but eventually I needed to blow my nose. I felt around in my pockets for a handkerchief but came up empty. Then I saw a crumpled Kleenex on the floor. I’ll never forget how I felt to see that Kleenex. The simple gift of a tissue on the floor at my feet when I needed one filled me with a sense of gratitude. It seemed to assure me that from now on, all my needs would be met if I stayed the course I’d just begun.

  From that day forward, everything began to change for me. Everything. I sought to follow the Gospel in its purest sense, on my own terms. I wouldn’t be returning to the Catholic church of fear and guilt that I’d been raised in. None of that interested me. I chose to come back to the church of social justice and nonviolent peace activism.

  It’s really going to cost you something now, Sheen, I thought.

  I was now part of a revitalized and more modern church that embraced the world with compassion, service, and love. Fear, guilt, and condemnation were greatly diminished by compassion, hope, and reconciliation, and simply living an honest life was celebrated as the ideal path to salvation.

  I had no conscious choice of saving my soul or anyone else’s. I came back to the Catholic church to discover who I truly was. I’d been living a confused, often selfish and unhappy life but beneath the drinking, self-pity, and anger was a person who longed to be set free. The church of the 1980s offered new possibilities and a moral compass. My reconversion was never about religion or politics. It was about spirituality and humanity. Catholicism became the door through which I began my own spiritual journey, not its final destination. At last I had found a way to unite the will of the spirit to the work of the flesh.

  A few afternoons later I went to an eightplex movie theater on the Champs-Elysées to see Martin Scorsese’s new film, Raging Bull, which had come out in the United States around Christmastime. Robert De Niro had already won the Oscar and Golden Globe awards for his extraordinary performance as the ill-fated boxer Jake LaMotta. Now the film was playing in France and I finally had a chance to see it.

  De Niro gave one of the most magnificent performances I’d ever seen, culminating with LaMotta, alone in a dark jail cell, banging his head against the wall in anguish and despair. De Niro’s depiction of LaMotta was so stunning and courageous I felt enormous gratitude to know that someone from my own profession was capable of such depth. Watching De Niro in that film made me feel extremely proud to be a fellow actor and I longed to work with him.

  The best films, I believe, strike a universal chord that inspires us to take action in our own lives. They invite us and challenge us to become better people. Raging Bull was such a film for me. The movie let out before sunset and, on the way back to the hotel, I had to fight the sudden impulse to tell everyone I saw how wonderful they were and to publicly declare how great it was to be alive. “How you doin’?” I wanted to call out to the people who passed me on the sidewalks. “I’m an American, I’m in Paris, I don’t know anyone, I don’t even speak your language. But I’m so happy to be alive and so grateful I’m not in a cell beating my head against the wall!”

  We wind up in cells of our own making when we’re not generous, loving, compassionate, and forgiving. Without love, we build dungeons in our hearts and fill them with our perceived enemies. We believe they deserve to be there for the harm they caused us, but by imprisoning them we’re destroying our own spirits. When our dungeons are overflowing with these prisoners we refuse to set free, we become slaves to our self-righteousness, our anger, resentments, and self-loathing, which we let multiply until we wind up imprisoned on our own death row.

  Raging Bull helped me realize how important it was to open up my own dungeons and set the captives free. If I didn’t, I’d wind up like Jake LaMotta, alone and banging my head against a wall. I was amazed that an artist helped me realize this—and a fellow actor, no less. That was the power of De Niro’s performance and Martin Scorsese’s magnificent direction.

  That night at the hotel I wrote De Niro a fan letter thanking him for what he’d accomplished with the film. I didn’t know if he would read it or even get it, but I sent it off the next morning nonetheless. Five years later, when I saw him perform in Cuba and His Teddy Bear at Joe Papp’s Public Theater in New York, I went backstage to congratulate him after the show.

  “Martin Sheen?” he said, shaking my hand.

  “Yeah. I’m a fan,” I said.

  “I know. I got your letter from Paris,” he said. “Thank you.”

  My return to the church and the awakenings it fostered were so joyful and profound that when I returned home from Paris I thought, Surely, the whole family will want to join me!

  “You’ve got to follow me on this spiritual path!” I urged them. “Everything’s going to be different from now on.” I envisioned them all falling in line behind me, converting, with all of us trotting off to Sunday Mass together.

  Well, not exactly. “He wants us to what?” the kids asked. “Why?”

  Looking back, I have to laugh. No one in the house had the slightest interest in the new direction I’d chosen, and I must have driven everyone nuts with my campaign. I didn’t want to travel this path without them, but they were
making it clear they didn’t want to travel it with me.

  Then in June of 1981 another unexpected phone call came.

  This one brought news that my oldest living brother, Mike, had died very suddenly. Mike had been one of my heroes, a Korean combat veteran who’d achieved a PhD on the GI bill and had lived with us in Malibu for a while when he’d been in poor health. A devout and liberal Catholic, he’d been so pleased to learn that I’d come back to the faith. The kids had been very attached to him, especially Charlie, who adored him. Losing him was a heavy blow to us all.

  “It’s not fair,” Charlie kept saying. “It’s not fair.”

  “It’s not,” I agreed. There was nothing I could say to make it right. “It’s life, and it’s not fair.”

  Losing Mike reminded me of how vulnerable we all are, and how important it is to make the most of whatever time we have. I started making choices that would determine the direction my life would take from that point forward and knew I had to commit to whatever came with taking a stand for what I believed in, even if and even when it meant getting arrested as a result. My conscience was aligned with Father Daniel Berrigan’s work with nonviolent resistance against every form of institutionalized violence. Shortly after Mike died, I met Father Berrigan on the set of In the King of Prussia, a true docudrama by Emile de Antonio about a group of Catholic peace activists who had broken into the General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and poured their own blood onto the nose cones of two nuclear warheads.

  The group called themselves the “Plowshares Eight,” and Father Berrigan along with his brother Phil were the leaders. I was asked to play the presiding judge, Samuel Salus II, in courtroom scenes to be filmed in New York City. My friendship with Dan Berrigan began on that set and grew over the years, leading to a series of arrests with him starting in June of 1986 for civil disobedience and trespassing—those were usually the charges—at nonviolent demonstrations against nuclear war, environmental hazards, and the misuse of American military intervention in Central America.