Acting President

The Times interviews Martin Sheen about his role as President Josiah “Jed” Bartlett in The West Wing.

“Sheen knows that, for most Americans, his Emmy-winning role as the big-hearted, well-meaning, erudite TV president has pretty much subsumed whatever image he may have had before in his not unsuccessful 40 years as an actor. While I’m with him there’s a constant stream of visitors demanding his time, an extra who used to work at his local bank, the out-of-town family of a cast member. But he knows these visitors want to be photographed not with Martin Sheen, actor in Apocalypse Now, Badlands, Gandhi and countless other films, but with Jed Bartlett, the president we all wish we had.”