Laurence Fishburne Struggled to Film an Apocalypse Now Scene About Sex as a 15-Year-Old Virgin: ‘Really Bad’

His costar Martin Sheen told him something that ‘saved’ his life, the actor reveals in the new Apple TV+ documentary ‘Number One on the Call Sheet’

Laurence Fishburne is sharing memories of a career that began when he was a child actor in the 1970s.

In the new two-episode Apple TV+ documentary Number One on the Call Sheet, Fishburne, 63, who launched his professional acting career at the tender age of 10, recalls a particularly intense experience he had while filming his third big-screen movie.

“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 says in the first episode, “The Black Leading Men in Hollywood,” directed by Reginald Hudlin (House Party, Boomerang). “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 continues. “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.”

That’s when the movie’s third-billed star — after Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall — stepped in and offered some life-changing words.

“And I heard Martin [Sheen] whisper in my ear,” Fisburne recalls. “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 number on on the call sheet is about to me. Saved my life.”

Fishburne would go on to have a varied career that spans stage, TV and film, including his Oscar-nominated performance as Ike Turner in the 1993 Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It. Along the way, he had a four-year run on the children’s comedy TV series Pee-wee’s Playhouse, from 1986–1990.

“Early in my career, mostly, film-wise, I was working with Francis, so I wound up doing Rumble Fish, [The] Cotton Club and Gardens of Stone in the early to mid ‘80s,” Fishburne says in the documentary. “And then I also wound up on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. People would often try to clown me about it. They’d be like ‘Oh my God, you were Cowboy Curtis.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ “

There was a lot more to the experience than met the eye of TV viewers at the time.

“Paul Reubens, his was the first set I worked on where it was incredibly diverse,” Fishburne recalls. “He had women in non-traditional roles. He had them behind the camera and one of the PAs on that was John Singleton. And John had just graduated form SC Film School. He was like, ‘I’ve written this thing, I want you to play the father, and it’s really great.’ And I was like, ‘When you got it written and it’s ready to go, send it to me and I will read it.’ “

The movie ended up being a career-making role for the actor. “So a year and a half later, he sent me the script to Boyz n the Hood,” Fishburne adds. “And it was really, really brilliant. I owe him a great debt.”

Number One on the Call Sheet is now streaming on Apple TV+.