President Jed Bartlet? Captain Benjamin Willard? Or just plain Martin Sheen? Who is he? Fighting hangovers with large coffees, Che Guevara T-shirt-wearing students shot blank looks en route to their lectures.
Walking unobtrusively among them in a traditional Irish peaked cap, Hollywood actor Martin Sheen began university this week. It is a long way from The West Wing to Western Ireland, from barking orders down Oval Office corridors to quietly listening to a lecture on practical ethics, but the 66-year-old was as determined as any fresher to fit in.
An ordinary international student, Sheen is spending a 15-week semester at the National University of Ireland, Galway, where he is studying an idiosyncratic combination of English literature, philosophy and oceanography.
The multimillionaire, who skipped university to seek his fortune as an actor, said he picked Galway to resume his studies because he was worried he would prove a ”distraction” to younger students in the United States. He chose wisely.
”Who is he?” said one student. ”Dad was going on about him,” said another, vaguely. ”My grandfather sent me an e-mail going, ‘make sure you study because you’ve got a celebrity in your university’,” said Sean, an American.
The university is pretty blase about A-listers. Nelson Mandela visited to pick up an honorary degree while Hillary Clinton gave a lecture with considerably more security hoopla than the non-existent entourage around Sheen.
The only clue to his celebrity was his deep LA tan. He drove himself from the airport, drew smiles when he held doors open for students and strolled around the university in earnest conversation with the Roman Catholic chaplain.
After two days of ”orientation”, it appeared that Galwegians and Sheen had taken to each other as passionately as a pair of snogging freshers.
”He just smiled and said hello to me,” said Mary Delaney (21) a commerce student. ”He was gentlemanly, not up himself at all,” said another.
”He’s a genuinely nice, ordinary man. You feel totally relaxed with him,” said Ann Monahan, the international student officer, who gave him his orientation tour on Monday. ”He’s a very dedicated family man and talks about his children a lot. One of his sons, Emilio [Estevez], has an entry in the Venice Film Festival so he’s hoping he’ll do well in that.”
Sheen will be subject to continual assessment and end-of-term exams, which he will have to pass to gain credits he can put towards a BA anywhere in the US or Europe. He has already said he hopes to continue at Galway next year.
Twelve hours of classes a week with an expected 24 hours of private study hold little fear for an actor who worked 72-hour weeks during the seven years he played the Democrat president in The West Wing.
Sheen, who told a local reporter he did not want this ”to be just a lark”, was keen to sign up for lectures on Shakespeare. ”He was talking to me about his choices in English and I mentioned the modern novel or 20th-century poetry,” said Kevin Barry, dean of arts. ”And he said, ‘but what about English literature? I really want to study Shakespeare.’ Literature departments might be trying to make their courses more up to date and here’s someone very up to date asking for the core elements of literature.”
Besides choosing the ”pain and pleasure in the Jacobean theatre” module and classes on Shakespeare’s tragedies and comedies, Sheen, whose mother hailed from Ireland, is planning to throw himself into student society life. ”He loves the idea of the archaeological society — he wants to go to digs,” said Barry. ”Coming from LA, he was also amused that we have a chocolate society.”
Student societies are jostling to sign him up. ”We’re trying to get him to join the juggling society,” said Richard Lyons (23) president of the jugglers. ”It’s great to think that the guy from Apocalypse Now is eating in the canteen.”
A dedicated activist who has been arrested dozens of times at peace protests in the US, Sheen is being targeted to front at least one campus campaign.
”We’ve got new couches in the bar so all the food is more expensive,” explained Liz Concannon (19). ”And we’ve got no baked potatoes on the menu anymore,” said Maeve Faherty (20). ”We want to start a campaign with Martin Sheen to bring back baked potatoes. He’s got an Irish background hasn’t he? He’d probably love to have a baked potato.”
Galway’s 15 000 students, who filled the city centre square with merriment last week, are clearly out-hellraising the star. Sheen, a reformed alcoholic, told one visitor at the university that he would not be going near the union bar. Incomprehension greets the news that he won’t be joining fellow freshmen for several pints of Guinness.
”When it’s raining and he’s not doing well in philosophy, he’s going to get depressed,” nodded Jonathan Clarke (19) sagely. – Guardian Unlimited Â