Credit: Turner Classic Movies
Sat 29 August 2026 20:15, UK
Back in the 1980s, there was actually some debate as to whether Pepsi or Coke was the better, carbonated drink, possibly because people’s taste buds hadn’t developed properly or perhaps because of some very influential advertising campaigns, one of which was synonymous with Martin Sheen.
Halfway through that decade, the former Apocalypse Now star was on big money to supply the voiceover for Pepsi, which at that time was branded ‘the choice of a new generation’, by which presumably they meant ‘a generation that hasn’t tried Coke yet’. Sheen supplied the voice-over for the tagline during that era, a period during which the soft drink brand threw millions of bucks at celebrities to back it, including, famously, Michael Jackson.
Everyone’s favourite ‘he’s got good songs but don’t stay over at his house’ pop sensation had a record-breaking $5million contract with Pepsi, which began in 1984 and got pretty concerning not long afterwards, when he was filming a commercial for them, and his hair got set on fire from some pyrotechnics, leading to a $1.5m lawsuit.
But back to Sheen, who in the decade that taste forgot was also doing narration for Toyota car commercials too, because frankly he was skint, having found himself in a strange place after leading Francis Ford Coppola’s chaotically expensive 1979 Vietnam movie.
Up until that point, things had been going incredibly well for ‘Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez’ as he was born, with a string of popular TV show appearances and then Terrence Malick’s masterpiece Badlands with Sissy Spacek in 1973, the New Hollywood neo-noir that saw his character go on a killing spree across America with his 15-year-old girlfriend.
Sheen was immensely proud of the film, declaring it was the best script he had ever read, and it led to his being cast in a TV war film called The Execution of Private Slovik, which earned him an Emmy nomination and the attention of Coppola, who was casting for Apocalypse Now.
Once Coppola’s sprawling epic was out of the way, Sheen continued to pick up big roles for some years, including Gandhi and the Steven King adaptation Firestarter with a young Drew Barrymore, but the work was starting to dry up, and soon the baton would be passed to his son Charlie who would star in Wall Street in 1987, although there was a small role for his father in that Oliver Stone movie too.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
Speaking about his time making those adverts in the ‘80s, Sheen was open and honest, telling the LA Times a few years later: “I needed the money. It was easier than doing a movie-of-the-week. I’m not a purist. I’ve been at this for 31 years, and most of the work I’ve done has been crap . . . But I did it for the money.
He added, “I’m not proud of it. If I was doing an audition tape today, I wouldn’t put Toyota and Pepsi on it. What would I put on it? Apocalypse Now, Badlands… those two are of equal importance in my life.”
Sheen wasn’t completely done, however. A late career casting in the smash political series The West Wing as the fictional US President saw him nominated for a host of Emmys, and he won the Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor’ in 2000. He also continued to work with Charlie, and again won an Emmy nod for the comedy Two and a Half Men with his son in 2005. By that point, he also probably didn’t have to pretend he liked Pepsi anymore, which must have been a blessing.
