Martin Sheen has good reason for wanting to forget his 36th birthday. The 85-year-old actor says he’s embarrassed by what he did on that day nearly 50 years ago, as he suffered through a profound emotional crisis while filming Francis Ford Coppola’s legendary war movie Apocalypse Now .

Sheen related his feelings to Josh Horowitz , describing how things went down on that day in 1976 when his alcohol-fueled meltdown was caught on film, becoming Apocalypse Now ’s iconic mirror-smashing scene :

That particular day was my 36th birthday, and I was wildly out of control with alcohol and going through a very deep emotional catharsis. I remember drinking all day, and it was night when we got to that.

There was no actual scene. There wasn't any dialogue for that. [Coppola] had rewritt

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