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Sat 20 December 2025 18:15, UK
What happens when you place three famously combustible personalities in the same movie? It’s either going to be fireworks, fury, or greatness. In the case of one Charlie Sheen film, it was all three, with one co-star left fuming at not only his behaviour, but that of the director, too.
The second-generation star enjoyed the excesses that came with Hollywood success, and when he emerged as one of the industry’s brightest young talents in the 1980s, he was quickly seduced by the lure of booze, drugs, sex, and women that came with the territory of being an A-lister-in-waiting.
Sheen never quite reached the heights that were being predicted during his breakout years, and his well-publicised personal troubles had a lot to do with it. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that he started sliding down the career ladder, although his reputation was already preceding him by that point.
Having already played the lead role in an awards-baiting Oliver Stone movie, lightning would strike twice when he reunited with the director for Wall Street. While it was nowhere near as successful as the ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’-winning Platoon, with the film’s only Academy Award nomination being won by Michael Douglas, it became an era-defining picture thanks to its ‘greed is good’ mantra.
That wasn’t necessarily a good thing, though, and it wasn’t the easiest movie to make, either. Stone has always been open in his fondness for marijuana and LSD, while Sheen was always more of a cocaine kind of guy. In later years, Sean Young would reveal that she’d been struggling with alcoholism for years, making the Wall Street set an accident waiting to happen.
Young had been tarred with the dreaded ‘difficult’ brush, but from the sound of things, she didn’t do anything to warrant the treatment she received during production. In addition to calling Stone “a bastard,” she didn’t have many kind words to say about Sheen: “Charlie was on a lot of coke on that show,” she told The Daily Beast. “And that’s what coke does to you.”
One incident saw the actor tape a piece of paper to her back with the word ‘cunt’ written on it, which she didn’t even find out about until the following day. “Michael tore it off without me knowing what it said,” she explained. “I spoke with Charlie the next day and said, ‘Your dad was a pro. Writing ‘cunt’ on a piece of tape and sticking it to my back? Not pro. It’s just stupid. What are you doing?’”
It was a film of seriously mixed emotions for Young, who’d originally lobbied for Darryl Hannah’s part. According to her, Stone then minimised her role in Wall Street while it was shooting as the friction between them increased, which culminated in her being fired on the spot and then having a driver drop her off at a bus stop to get rid of her.
How does she feel about it now? “Michael Douglas was wonderful, but Oliver and Charlie were awful,” she said, encapsulating the two sides of her experience.
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