Why You Don't See Emilio Estevez On Screen Any More
What the former President of the Brat Pack has been up to since the 1980s.
The son of Martin Sheen, the brother of Charlie Sheen, ex of Demi Moore, and longtime BBFs with Tom Cruise (and noted Millwall F.C. supporter). Emilio Estevez is, for better or worse, Hollywood royalty.
In the 1980s, he was one of the biggest rising stars in the US film industry, appearing in both mainstream hits like The Outsiders, The Breakfast Club, and St. Elmo's Fire, and weirdo cult classics like Repo Man and Maximum Overdrive (a.k.a. the Stephen King Killer Truck Movie).
In the 90s, he found a regular starring role as cynical lawyer-turned-youth-hockey-coach Gordon Bombay in video-store staple The Mighty Ducks trilogy. Which makes it all the more perplexing why the former Brat Packer has seemingly vanished off cinema screens in the past decade. Since the early aughts, Estevez has only appeared sporadically in film and on TV, and one can't help but wonder why.
By Estevez's own telling, after his 1994 divorce from wife Paula Abdul, he simply lost interest in maintaining his celebrity. Which doesn't mean that he's suddenly gone off the map, far from it. One look at Estevez's IMdB page will show that he's kept himself busy, but not as an actor. Estevez shifted his focus to directing in the 90s, both on the big and small screens.
His 2006 political drama Bobby follows a fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the the shooting of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy following his win of the 1968 Democratic presidential primary in California. His 2010 adventure-drama The Way, starring himself opposite his own father in the lead role, earned positive critical acclaim and holds a "Certified Fresh" rating of 83% on Rotten Tomatoes.
His latest outing, The Public, was released last April after screening to positive marks at several film festivals. It's based on the true story of a of a group of homeless people who refused to leave a public library in downtown Cincinnati during a brutal cold front.
Estevez again stars, with an ensemble cast that includes Alec Baldwin, Jena Malone, Taylor Schilling, Jeffrey Wright, and Michael K. Williams. Estevez also directed several episodes of TV shows like Numb3rs and CSI: NY in the late-aughts. And, if IMdB is to be believed, he's currently attached to reprise his most well-known role as Gordon Bombay in a Disney+ series based on The Mighty Ducks.
In truth, Emilio Estevez never really "disappeared" off our screens, moreso he just re-prioritized. In a January interview with The Guardian, Estevez spoke at length about his and many of his Brat Pack peers' own careers in retrospect. "I don’t relitigate my past," he says when asked about the Brad Pack, "It’s annoying because Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Matt Damon have worked together more than any of us have. We just made two movies and somehow it morphed into something else."
Emilio, who unlike his father and brother kept his real last name on-screen, is remarked as having "a seriousness, a kind of moral rectitude." We can always endlessly speculate ad nauseum about what happened to this or that celebrity, but more often than not the truth is more like Emilio's. He simply found other things he enjoyed doing, so that's what he does now.
The Public is currently available for rent and purchase on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play, and YouTube Movies.