William Devane, at 87 years old, has finally broken a silence that spanned half a century, offering a rare, extended reflection on his career, his enduring marriage, and the singular professional relationship that bookended his life in the public eye: his bond with Martin Sheen. In a candid conversation that marks one of the only in-depth interviews he has given in years, the veteran actor pulled back the curtain on the strange echo of history that connected two fictional Oval Offices, three decades apart, and the man who was standing in both of them with him.

The story begins in 1974, during the production of The Missiles of October, a television docudrama chronicling the harrowing thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Devane, then a relatively unknown actor, was cast as President John F. Kennedy, a role that would define the trajectory of his career and earn him an Emmy nomination.

Standing opposite him, portraying Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was a rising star named Martin Sheen. The two actors, both in their thirties, were tasked with embodying the fraught, intimate dynamic of brothers navigating the precipice of nuclear annihilation, a challenge that forged an immediate and lasting professional respect between them.

Devane’s path to that iconic role was anything but straightforward, a twist of fate that he recounts with characteristic bluntness and a shrug. He had originally auditioned for the part of Robert Kennedy, but Sheen, who was already attached to play Bobby, made it clear he would not do the project unless Hal Holbrook, the original choice for JFK, remained in the cast. When Holbrook’s schedule fell through, the director, a friend of Devane’s from the New York Shakespeare Festival, turned to him in a moment of desperation.

The network was reportedly skeptical of casting an unknown in such a beloved and historically significant role, but Devane’s performance silenced all doubt, launching him into the national consciousness as a definitive on-screen Kennedy.

The chemistry between Devane and Sheen was immediate and electric, a connection that Devane credits entirely to Sheen’s natural restraint and unshowy professionalism. He has spoken with genuine admiration about how Sheen, even as a young actor, carried the immense weight of playing Robert Kennedy without ever reaching for a moment bigger than the scene required. It was a lesson in understated performance that Devane carried with him for the rest of his career, a principle of letting silence and implication do the heavy lifting that dialogue could not.

That shared instinct for authenticity created a bond between the two men that would prove to be remarkably durable.

Thirty years later, in 2003, television brought them back together in a fictional White House, but this time the dynamics had shifted. Sheen was now the President of the United States on The West Wing, and Devane walked through the door as his Secretary of State. The symmetry was not lost on Devane, who described the experience as strange and quietly moving.

Walking onto that set and finding Sheen behind the Resolute Desk, instead of beside it as a brother, was a profound moment of professional déjà vu. He has spoken about Sheen’s presence on that set with the same reverence colleagues have offered for decades, noting his generosity with younger actors and a humility that seemed incongruous with his level of fame.

Beyond the professional echoes, Devane’s interview offers a rare glimpse into the private world that sustained him for over six decades: his marriage to Eugenie McCabe. They met as students at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in the early 1960s, and she became the steadiest presence in his life, a quiet counterpoint to the chaos of a working actor’s career. While Devane embodied presidents and power brokers on screen, Eugenie carved out her own identity as a theater producer in Los Angeles, and together they raised two sons, building a life first in Sherman Oaks and later in the Coachella Valley, where they opened a string of family-owned restaurants.

Their 60-year marriage stands as a remarkable anomaly in an industry often defined by its transient relationships. Devane has acknowledged the rarity of their bond, crediting Eugenie with being the one person who knew him before the presidents, the Kennedys, and the cigar-chomping corporate titans entered the picture. Her death in July 2022, at the age of 82, left a void that Devane has navigated with the same quiet resilience he brought to his most challenging roles.

He has admitted that her loss has fundamentally reshaped his world, leaving him for the first time in six decades without the anchor that had steadied him through the unpredictable rhythms of Hollywood.

Devane’s career, which he has described as built almost entirely by accident on playing powerful men, is a testament to his versatility and his willingness to age authentically on screen. From his early days as a spear carrier in Joseph Papp’s Shakespeare Festival to his breakout in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, he consistently chose roles that challenged him, even when they didn’t lead to the kind of movie stardom he once seemed destined for.

He has reflected on his performance in Rolling Thunder as a missed opportunity to become a leading man, admitting with disarming honesty that he wasn’t sophisticated enough to navigate that particular path, a sentiment he famously summarized by noting that Harrison Ford has a jet and he does not.

Instead, television became his true home. His decade-long run on Knots Landing as the morally ambiguous Greg Sumner cemented his status as a household name, a role he approached with a theatrical sensibility, building the character around what was left unsaid. He fought to keep Sumner’s rough edges intact, insisting on details like the ever-present cigar and personally rewriting one of the show’s most emotional sequences, a single-shot monologue watching a video message from his dying wife, which he still calls the finest piece of work he ever did on television.

The role earned him three Soap Opera Digest Awards and a Golden Globe nomination, even as the show itself was consistently snubbed by the Emmys.

The same era brought him into the orbit of Alfred Hitchcock, who halted production on his final film, Family Plot, to recast the lead role with Devane after his first choice became available. It was a strange, almost accidental turn of events that left some of the original actor’s long shots quietly uncut in the finished film. Devane’s filmography also includes memorable turns in Marathon Man as a Nazi hunter and in the devastating post-apocalyptic drama Testament, a role that hit uncomfortably close to home for an actor who had spent years embodying the Cold War brinkmanship the film imagined going catastrophically wrong.

As the decades passed, Hollywood continued to circle back to the same well, casting Devane as a default choice for presidential authority. He played the President of the United States in Stargate SG-1 and again in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, and spent three seasons as Secretary of Defense James Heller on 24, a role he reprised in the limited series 24: Live Another Day. He has joked about his sudden promotion from Secretary to Commander in Chief in the role’s final act, a reflection of his enduring ability to project gravitas and command.

Even into his 80s, he has continued to work steadily, appearing in a recurring arc on Bosch Legacy as recently as 2022.

Throughout it all, the thread of Martin Sheen remained a constant, a strange and unrepeatable echo across three decades of American political fiction. Devane has never pretended that his initial casting as JFK was part of some grand design, attributing it instead to a scheduling conflict and a director who knew his work. But he has been emphatic about what happened once the cameras rolled, the immediate chemistry that made playing brothers feel effortless, and the lasting respect that grew from that shared experience.

He has described Sheen as a man of devout faith and deep humility, qualities that made him exactly the right person to have bookended his career.

In the end, the story William Devane wanted to tell at 87 was not a list of presidents played or Kennedys embodied, but the plain human fact of it all. Across 50 years and two entirely different decades of American television, the one constant thread running through his career had a name and a face, and it had simply been Martin Sheen the whole time. That connection, forged in the tense rooms of a 1974 docudrama and rekindled in the fictional West Wing of the 2000s, stands as a testament to the enduring power of professional respect and the strange, unpredictable ways a career can come full circle.