Laurence Fishburne is one of the greatest actors alive, but that doesn’t mean making movies — even the most iconic in cinematic history — has always been easy.
In the Apple TV+ documentary Number One on the Call Sheet, released March 28, Fishburne revealed that filming Apocalypse Now at the age of 14 or 15 was “really bad” for a big reason.
“There’s a scene in Apocalypse Now that got cut from the original film, and then it’s been put back in the redux,” he explained in the documentary. “I guess I was 14, 15, whatever, trying to do this scene, talking about, you know, really… sex. And I had no sexual experience. Like, none.”
“And [the film’s director] Francis Coppola couldn’t figure out how to get me to be any more experienced than I am,” Fishburne continued. “But he kept asking me to do it over and over again. I did something like 40 takes. It was really bad. And I could tell that he was disappointed. So I was feeling really, really down. Really dejected.”
Luckily, co-star Martin Sheen went out on a limb and offered to help the young actor.
“And I heard Martin [Sheen] whisper in my ear,” he explained. “He said, ‘Did anyone ever tell you you were a really good actor?’ And I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘You’re a really good actor.’ That’s what being No.1 on the call sheet is about to me. Saved my life.”
In a 2013 interview on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, Fishburne admitted that he lied about his age to land the part in Coppola’s 1979 film. His character was meant to be 17 in the movie, but Fishburne was 14 when he took the role — and he turned 18 by the time the movie was released.
Fishburne explained that he mostly stayed quiet throughout his audition to convince the film’s team he was older, and when directly asked his age by producer Fred Roos Fishburne, lied and said he was 16.
The actor and director went on to work on several projects together after Apocalypse Now, including Cotton Club, Rumble Fish and Gardens of Stone. He also had a role in the director’s 2024 offering Megalopolis as the assistant and driver for Adam Driver’s Cesar Catalina.
Fishburne also looked back at another past project of his in the documentary — Pee-wee’s Playhouse. “I also wound up on Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” he said. “And people would often try to clown me about it, they’d be like, ‘Oh my God, you were Cowboy Curtis!’ And I was like, ‘Yeah! That’s right!’”
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