\n\t\t\t\t\tJohnny Depp landed the minor role of Lerner in Platoon after Oliver Stone passed him over for the lead, and much of his screen time was cut in the edit, a year before 21 Jump Street made him a star. That casting call also brought Charlie Sheen, Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger to the Philippines, where Vietnam veteran Dale Dye ran the cast through 30 days of jungle training that Dye later reused to prepare the ensemble of Saving Private Ryan.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Twenty-two years old, fresh off his first trip outside the United States, Johnny Depp landed in the Philippines to play a soldier named Lerner, a role so trimmed in the editing room that his best scenes never made the final cut. Charlie Sheen carried the lead as Chris Taylor, retracing steps his own father Martin had taken a few years earlier on the set of Apocalypse Now. Around them, Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe were building the moral standoff that would define the film, while Forest Whitaker, Kevin Dillon and John C. McGinley rounded out a cast nobody yet recognized as future Hollywood royalty. Dale Dye, a real Vietnam veteran, dragged them through thirty days of military training before a single camera rolled.<\/p>\n
A cast of legends in the making<\/p>\n
When Platoon opened in December 1986, few moviegoers realized how many future stars were crammed into Oliver Stone\u2019s Vietnam drama. Charlie Sheen led as Chris Taylor, a role modeled on Stone\u2019s own tour of duty, flanked by Tom Berenger as the scarred Sergeant Barnes and Willem Dafoe as his moral opposite, Sergeant Elias. Forest Whitaker, Kevin Dillon, John C. McGinley and Keith David rounded out the unit.<\/p>\n
Then there was Johnny Depp, cast as the soldier Lerner. He had auditioned for the lead, but Stone judged him too young and unknown and handed him a supporting part instead. Depp was 22 when he left for the Philippines, having never before left American soil, and many of his longer dialogue scenes were cut<\/a> from the theatrical version. One year later, he landed the role that turned him into a household name.<\/p>\n A Sheen family affair in the same jungle<\/p>\n Charlie Sheen was retracing his father\u2019s footsteps. Martin Sheen had starred as Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now (1979), and Charlie, then about 10, had visited that chaotic Philippines set<\/a> as a kid. Seven years on, he returned to the same country to headline his own Vietnam story.<\/p>\n Dale Dye\u2019s boot camp changed how Hollywood trains actors<\/p>\n To make the exhaustion real, Stone brought in Dale Dye, a retired Marine captain and decorated Vietnam veteran, who put the cast through a grueling month of military training in the Philippine jungle. Sheen, Dafoe, Depp and Whitaker slept little, ate rations, ran night patrols and endured simulated ambushes. Stone knew what authenticity looked like: deployed on September 16, 1967, he served with the 25th Infantry Division near the Cambodian border.<\/p>\n