Her post comes days after Sheen said he wrote her a check for a million dollars, claiming she cashed it one month after he gave it to her, much to his surprise and shock, while appearing on the KFC Radio podcast.
Sheen did not clarify when he wrote her the check, noting he forgot if it took place during their marriage or after their divorce.
The “Two and a Half Men” star said it was more of a symbolic gift to her, noting it was most likely for her birthday but couldn’t exactly recall.
Richards’ birthday is Feb. 17, and the check she shared was dated December.
“I mean, I don’t think she’ll be too mad,” he said on his podcast, referring to Richards being upset that he told the story.
“I wrote a check to Denise once for a million dollars on her birthday kind of as a joke, and she kept it not as a joke,” Sheen, who has been sober for nearly eight years, explained.
“And then, like a month later, f—g cashed it,” he added. “Which makes it sting more…”
Denise Richards shared an image of a million dollar check from Charlie Sheen.(Denise Richards/Instagram)
Sheen, who said he would have most likely cashed it too if it was him, said: “She couldn’t let me know just maybe the day of. ‘Hey, you sound like you’re driving somewhere.’ ‘Yeah, to the bank, actually!’”
He recalled feeling grateful that the check didn’t bounce.
Richards and Sheen wed in 2002, before separating in March 2005 when she was six months pregnant with their second child, daughter Lola.
Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards at the premiere of Netflix’s “aka Charlie Sheen”on Sep. 4, 2025 in Hollywood(Unique Nicole/Getty Images)
In 2020, Richards reflected on leaving Sheen while she was pregnant with their second child, during an episode of the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
“When I got pregnant with Lola, things started to change rapidly. It was a very dark time and very toxic. And I filed for divorce when I was six months pregnant with her. I always did whatever I could to hide Charlie’s behavior.”
Richards and Sheen now have an amicable relationship.
Richards is also on good terms with Sheen’s third ex-wife Brooke Mueller, whom he shares twin sons Max and Bob with.
Richards is in the midst of her divorce from Aaron Phypers, after six years of marriage.
The actress has accused Phypers of physical and emotional abuse throughout their marriage, and provided the court with images of an alleged black eye she received following an altercation with him.
Last week, Phypers was arrested in court and charged with four felonies: two counts of injuring a spouse and two counts of dissuading a witness by force or threat.
Richards and Sheen now have an amicable relationship. (Tommy Garcia via Getty Images)
He posted the $200,000 bail hours after his arrest.
Richards testified earlier that her estranged husband tried to destroy her reputation by allegedly leaking nude images of her, as well as claiming that he stole her computer with the intention to share “private” information and images to news outlets.
Sarah Sotoodeh is an associate entertainment editor for Fox News Digital.
Drugs, alcohol, and fame have long been intertwined in Hollywood’s industry. The constant pressure to perform, maintain a public image, and navigate global scrutiny often drives stars toward self-destructive habits, which are often disguised as a form of relief. For decades, the entertainment industry has glamorized excess, but the reality behind the scenes is far more sobering. It’s a reality that sometimes includes addiction, public breakdowns, and tragic losses. From music icons to movie legends, sober celebrities have found themselves at the crossroads between fame and freedom, choosing recovery as their greatest comeback.
The industry’s culture of indulgence can lead to dark spirals, mental health struggles, ruined relationships, and even death. It doesn’t always have to end that way, though. Countless stars have fought their way back from addiction, redefining themselves through sobriety. They’ve proven that strength and vulnerability can coexist, and that healing isn’t weakness, but rather a form of power.
Recently, Offset and Allen Iverson have become the latest public figures to open up about their journey to sobriety. Offset revealed that he’s been four years clean from codeine, saying his son inspired him to quit after realizing drugs weren’t necessary for creativity. Meanwhile, NBA Hall of Famer Allen Iverson announced he’s been six months sober from alcohol, calling it one of the best decisions of his life. Both men’s stories show how breaking free from destructive habits can spark a new era of clarity, health, and purpose.
Their stories mirror a growing wave of celebrities who are redefining what strength looks like. Sobriety isn’t just about quitting; it’s about reclaiming control, mental clarity, and emotional stability. From those who hit rock bottom to those who simply wanted better for themselves, their decisions to change prove that redemption is always possible, regardless of fame or fortune. They also further emphasize that recovery and self-control can coexist with success. Check out a list of 20 sober celebrities whose journeys reflect the courage it takes to walk away from addiction, temptation, and old habits in pursuit of peace and purpose. Congrats to all of these people for making a tough but essential decision for the greater good.
1. Robert Downey Jr.
Source:Getty
Once one of Hollywood’s most infamous addicts, Downey Jr. spent years battling heroin and cocaine before finding recovery in 2003. Through therapy, meditation, and family support, he rebuilt his career and life…ultimately becoming Iron Man and one of cinema’s greatest comeback stories.
2. Offset
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The Migos rapper opened up about being fur years sober from codeine, saying he quit after realizing how it affected his family and creativity. He credits fatherhood and self-discipline for helping him stay focused and grounded.
3. Steve-O
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Known for his chaotic Jackass stunts, Steve-O’s partying spiraled into heavy drug use and near death experiences. After an intervention from friends in 2008, he entered rehab and has been sober ever since, now using his platform to help others in recovery.
4. Lena Waithe
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The Emmy-winning writer and producer decided to give up alcohol to prioritize her mental clarity and creative flow. She’s spoken about how sobriety has sharpened her focus and deepened her storytelling.
5. Mary J. Blige
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The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul endured years of alcohol and cocaine abuse while hiding behind fame and success. Over a decade sober, she credits faith, therapy, and music for her healing, calling recovery her “greatest victory.”
6. Eminem
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The rap legend nearly died in 2007 after a methadone overdoes during his battle with prescription pill addiction. Now more than 15 years sober, he says his kids and music gave him purpose to fight for life again.
7. Macklemore
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The Grammy-winning rapper has long been open about his struggles with alcohol and relapse. He continues to live sober and uses music to inspire others to stay strong through addiction recovery.
8. Samuel L. Jackson
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Before becoming one of Hollywood’s most respected actors, Jackson fought heroin and cocaine addiction in the 1980s. Now more than 30 years sober, he credits his wife and family for helping him stay grounded.
9. Demi Lovato
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The pop star’s battles with addiction, overdose, and recovery have been public and painful. Lovato has since found a balanced path, embracing therapy, music, and faith as key parts of their sobriety and mental health journey.
10. Anthony Anderson
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The Black-ish star quit drinking to improve his health and manage diabetes. He says sobriety has given him renewed energy and helped him live more intentionally.
11. Allen Iverson
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Once known for his hard-living lifestyle, the NBA Hall of Famer revealed he’s now six months sober from alcohol. Iverson says the change has brought him peace and a clearer sense of direction.
12. Russell Brand
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The British comedian spent years addicted to heroin and alcohol before entering rehab in 2002. More than 20 years sober now, Brand advocates for recovery, mindfulness, and purpose through his books and podcasts.
13. Fantasia Barrino
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The American Idol winner once leaned on alcohol to cope with pain and pressure after early fame. Today she’s years sober, crediting prayer, family, and self-love for helping her heal.
14. Brad Pitt
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After his public divorce from Angelina Jolie, Pitt sought help for his heavy drinking and depression. Since getting sober, he’s spoken about the power of therapy and emotional honesty in his recovery.
15. Chris Rock
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The comedian revealed he quit drinking and started therapy to manage depression and trauma. He says sobriety has brought him calm, focus, and a deeper sense of personal peace.
16. Doja Cat
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In 2024, Doja Cat shared that she quit drinking after realizing alcohol made her feel “out of control.” She says sobriety has sharpened her creativity and made her feel more in tune with herself.
17. Ben Affleck
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Affleck’s long struggle with alcoholism has led to multiple stints in rehab and public relapses. Now asober and self-aware, he continues to focus on family, acting, and long-term recovery.
18. Doechii
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The rising rapper revealed she was constantly drinking and partying early in her career until she lost sight of herself. After quitting alcohol, she says her creativity and confidence returned stronger than ever.
19. Naomi Capmbell
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The supermodel faced addiction struggles in the early 2000s, entering rehab for cocaine and alcohol abuse. Now sober and focused on health, she’s become an advocate for wellness and emotional recovery.
20. Charlie Sheen
Source:Getty
Once known for his wild partying and public meltdowns, Sheen’s addictions to drugs and alcohol nearly destroyed his career and family life. He’s now been sober since 2017, crediting fatherhood and self-reflection for helping him find peace and stability.
Denise Richards’ estranged husband Aaron Phypers is attempting to drag Charlie Sheen and Brandi Glanville into his acrimonious divorce battle with the “Wild Things” star.
Phypers’ lawyers named Sheen and Glanville as witnesses in court documents that were obtained by Fox News Digital. The documents were filed on Sept. 29 ahead of the hearings scheduled for Oct. 6 to Oct. 8.
In the filing, Phypers’ attorneys stated that Sheen, who was previously married to Richards, and Glanville, who co-starred with her on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” could testify regarding “Denise’s history of not being truthful and of drug and alcohol abuse.”
Denise Richards’ ex Aaron Phypers has called Charlie Sheen and Brandi Glanville to testify amid his divorce from the “Wild Things” star. (Getty Images)
Phypers, 53, filed for divorce from Richards, 54, in June after seven years of marriage. In July, Richards was granted a temporary restraining order against Phypers, after accusing him of domestic violence.
That same month, Phypers accused Richards of having an addiction to Vicodin in a letter to friends and family that was obtained by Page Six. He has also claimed that she cheated on him with another man and alleged that she physically abused him.
Both Richards and Phypers have denied each other’s allegations.
On Sept. 30, Richards responded to Phypers’ witness list by filing an objection that was obtained by Fox News Digital.
Phypers filed for divorce from Richards in June. (Gabriel Olsen via Getty Images)
“This person is not a percipient witness to abuse committed by Petitioner against Respondent,” the document said of Sheen and Glanville, as well as other named witnesses, including Richards’ father Irv Richards.
Phypers’ witness list stated that Irv’s testimony would include “communications from Denise regarding the case and her plans to violate court orders restricting disposal of assets.”
The witness list also named Richards herself, who would be asked to address “all of the false allegations being made against Aaron as well as her violations of court orders, her lack of fear of Aaron including phone calls and messages and video sent, her unreliability as a witness, and her violence against Aaron.”
In addition, the witness list included Phypers himself and three of his family members who would speak to “all of Denise’s allegations, as well as her [alleged] violations of court orders, her lack of fear, phone calls, messages, video she sent, violence by her, breaking Aaron’s phone, trespassing in family members’ rooms, Denise’s drug and alcohol use.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to representatives for Richards, Phypers, Sheen and Glanville for comment.
The witness list states that Sheen and Glanville could testify regarding “Denise’s history of not being truthful and of drug and alcohol abuse.” (Getty Images)
Family law attorney Patrick Baghdaserians of Baghdaserians Law Group criticized Phypers for calling Sheen and Glanville to testify, telling Fox News Digital that the “witness testimony scope is not only irrelevant but seemingly geared towards intimidating and embarrassing Ms. Richards.”
“The scope of testimony proffered for Mr. Sheen and Ms. Glanville is largely irrelevant as to whether abuse occurred between the parties,” the legal expert said.
Baghdaserians told Fox News Digital that he found the “inflammatory and derogatory statements” about Richards in the witness list to be “highly unusual.” He went on to say that it was unlikely that Sheen and Glanville would be allowed to take the stand.
“In a domestic violence setting, abuse is based on admissible evidence,” he said. “Character or historical tendencies generally carry very little weight. For example, whether a victim allegedly had a past problem with drugs or alcohol is largely irrelevant when it comes to whether abuse occurred.”
Baghdaserians added, “There is a strong public policy to exclude irrelevant and embarrassing testimony in court. This is even more important when the offered irrelevant testimony is being proffered to seemingly embarrass and or intimidate a purported victim of domestic violence.”
“Given this strong public policy, I cannot imagine the judicial officer in this matter allowing either Mr. Sheen or Ms. Glanville to testify against Ms. Richards.”
Sheen and Richards were married from 2002 to 2006. (Stephen Shugerman)
Sheen and Richards were married from 2002 to 2006 and share daughters Sami, 21, and Lola, 20. In 2005, Richards filed for divorce, citing Sheen’s drug addiction as a contributing factor in the breakdown of their marriage.
The “Two and a Half Men” star has been open about his own past struggles with alcoholism and substance abuse, and he has been sober since 2017. Sheen has never publicly accused Richards of drug use.
For several years, the two battled in court over child custody and financial support. However, they have since developed an amicable relationship. In a 2023 interview with People, Sheen told the outlet that he and Richards are “absolutely friendly.”
The two reunited for her reality show, “Denise Richards & Her Wild Things.”(Getty Images)
“We went through so much s— together that I don’t think either one of us has any energy left to be divisive,” he said. “The only thing that matters is the kids. We knew we had to park our nonsense and focus on the children, because they had nothing to do with any of our crud.”
“Even in the hottest portions of depths of the inferno, we were still able to maintain a perspective that yes, the children need to come first,” Sheen added. “Now we’re super friendly, and we’re actually able to process so much of it through humor these days.”
In April, Sheen made an appearance on Richards’ reality show, “Denise Richards & her Wild Things.” During the episode, the former couple had dinner with Lola and discussed their relationship.
“The one thing I will say about you and I going through the difficulty we did with our divorce, you knew I always had your back, at the end of the day,” Richards told Sheen, according to InStyle.
“I appreciate that,” Sheen replied. “If you didn’t, then we wouldn’t be able to have more moments like this.”
Last month, Richards attended the premiere of Sheen’s Netflix documentary, “aka Charlie Sheen.” While on the red carpet, the two hugged and posed together for photos.
The former couple posed for photos together at the premiere of his documentary, “aka Charlie Sheen.”(Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Glanville and Richards’ relationship has been rocky and fraught with tension in recent years. The two formerly co-starred on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” but Richards left the show in 2020 after Glanville claimed that they had an affair while the “Starship Troopers” actress was married to Phypers.
During a 2020 episode of the show, Glanville claimed that Phypers was “OK” with their alleged affair and that she “knew” that the former couple “have an understanding.”
“Like, she could be with girls if she wanted to. And as long as, you know, it wasn’t with a guy,” Glanville said.
Richards has vehemently denied Glanville’s claims. In February 2020, she replied to a fan’s comment on Instagram, saying that she and Phypers “absolutely” did not have an open marriage and she was “100% monogamous to my husband.”
Glanville claims Phypers was “OK” with their alleged affair, however Richards has repeatedly denied ever sleeping with her “RHOBH” co-star.(Getty Images)
In a report published by Page Six last week, Phypers defended Glanville, telling the outlet, “Call Brandi Glanville what you like, but she is not a liar!”
A source also spoke to the outlet, shedding some light on why Phypers wanted Glanville to take the witness stand amid his divorce from Richards.
“In [an] effort to not allow this [divorce] case to be a Brandi 2.0, Glanville is being called to testify on Richards’s credibility and manipulative moves,” the insider said.
“Denise did [Glanville] dirty,” the source added. “Aaron Phypers’ witness list includes people who can deny Denise Richards credibility on telling the truth.”
Legal experts said that it is unlikely Sheen or Glanville will be allowed to testify. (Gregg DeGuire)
However, family law attorney Holly Davis of the firm Kirker Davis agreed with Baghdaserians’ assertion that it was unlikely Glanville and Sheen would be allowed to provide witness testimony during the hearings.
The legal expert said, “The only way this testimony actually gets in to the record over a relevancy objection is if the attorney can somehow show that Denise Richards has a modus operandi when she divorces people, otherwise dragging a person into court to testify that a person lied or did drugs ten years ago is a waste of the court’s time and could be achieved by the testimony of Denise and her husband.”
“This is a messy, ugly, high conflict case that will eat up all of the parties’ resources,” Davis added. “Denise and her husband need to settle the case, move on with their lives, and forget they ever met if they know what’s good for them. If they continue at this rate, both sides will lose ultimately at a final hearing.”
Ashley Hume is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to ashley.hume@fox.com and on Twitter: @ashleyhume
There’s a long list of reasons US stability is now teetering between “Fyre Festival” and “Charlie Sheen’s ‘Tiger Blood’ era.” Now you can add cybersecurity to the tally. A crucial cyber defense law, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA 2015), has lapsed. With the government out of commission, the nation’s computer networks are more exposed for… who knows how long. Welcome to 2025, baby.
CISA 2015 promotes the sharing of cyber threat information between the private and public sectors. It includes legal protections for companies that might otherwise hesitate to share that data. The law promotes “cyber threat information sharing with industry and government partners within a secure policy and legal framework,” a coalition of industry groups wrote in a letter to Congress last week.
As Cybersecurity Diveexplains, CISA 2015 shields companies from antitrust liability, regulatory enforcement, private lawsuits and FOIA disclosures. Without it, sharing gets more complicated. “There will just be many more lawyers involved, and it will all go slower, particularly new sharing agreements,” Ari Schwartz, cybersecurity director at the law firm Venable, told the publication. That could make it easier for adversaries like Russia and China to conduct cyberattacks.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)
(Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images)
Before the shutdown, there was support for renewal from the private sector, the Trump administration and bipartisan members of Congress. One of the biggest roadblocks was Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. He objected to reauthorizing the law without changes to some of his pet issues. Notably, he wanted to add language that would neuter the ability to combat misinformation and disinformation. He canceled his planned revision of the bill after a backlash from his peers. The committee then failed to approve any version before the expiration date.
Meanwhile, House Republicans included a short-term CISA 2015 renewal in its government funding bill. But Democrats, whose support the GOP needs, wouldn’t support the Continuing Resolution for other reasons. They want Affordable Care Act premium tax credits extended beyond their scheduled expiration at the end of the year. Without an extension, Americans’ already spiking health insurance premiums will continue to skyrocket.
In its letter to Congress last week, the industry coalition warned that the expiration of CISA 2015 would lead to “a more complex and dangerous” security landscape. “Sharing information about cyber threats and incidents makes it harder for attackers because defenders learn what to watch for and prioritize,” the group wrote. “As a result, attackers must invest more in new tools or target different victims.”
Nearly four decades after then-Gov. Bill Clinton was said to have whispered about Charlie Sheen‘s girlfriend on a movie set, Dolly Fox told Fox News Digital, “That is true. … That did happen.”
The moment occurred during the filming of “Three for the Road” in 1987, when the cast visited the Arkansas governor’s mansion at the time.
In his new memoir, “The Book of Sheen,” the actor wrote that Clinton leaned in and whispered to an aide, “Find out what you can about the brunette.” The brunette, Sheen revealed, was Fox.
Charlie Sheen alleged that Bill Clinton tried to hit on his girlfriend in the 1980s. (Getty Images)
Fox, now speaking publicly about the claim, backed Sheen’s recollection of the night.
“We were in Arkansas, 1987, shooting a movie. … We did go to the governor’s mansion,” she said.
She laughed it off, saying, “It wasn’t creepy. Clinton was never creepy. … He did not do anything wrong to me.
“I shook his hand, said, ‘Hello … How are you? I wasn’t looking at the governor. I was in love with Charlie.”
Dolly Fox, pictured here in 2023, said that Charlie Sheen’s memory of the moment with Bill Clinton was accurate.(Santiago Felipe/Getty Images)
She went on to share with Fox News Digital that the moment with Clinton was harmless.
“He was never a creep. Utmost respect for the Clintons. … You know, it’s the ’80s. Guys saw a pretty girl, they flirted. It’s no big deal. He didn’t do anything wrong to me.”
Charlie Sheen originally wrote about the comment in his new memoir, “The Book of Sheen.”(Michael Buckner)
However, Sheen reflected on the incident in his memoir with a different tone.
“Clearly the behavior that transformed a harmless intern a few years later into a household name had been in play long before her blue dress became famous,” he wrote.
“It was quite the moment in time to be ringside for that slice of creepy history … I felt bad for Dolly to be objectified and skeeved-out like that, but still had to take some pride in ‘Bubba’ fancying my gal.”
Meanwhile, Fox defended Clinton’s character and emphasized the long-standing ties between their families.
Fox, who dated Sheen in the late ’80s, explained to Fox News Digital that her mother, the late Yolande Fox, Miss America 1951 and a prominent social activist, had long-standing personal ties to the Clinton family.
Dolly Fox and Charlie Sheen dated in the late ’80s.(Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
“My mother was friends with his mother, Virginia Kelly. When I next saw Hillary and the president, I was with my mother, and we were at the White House. … We were always friends and friendly.
“As the years went by, and I had my own kid, I would take my daughter to the White House. … The [Clintons] were welcoming and sweet.”
According to Fox, her mother and Clinton’s mother would go to the racetrack together.
Yolande even hosted one of Clinton’s official inaugural parties in Washington, D.C.
But the connections didn’t stop there.
“And it gets crazier because Monica Lewinsky’s mother was a friend of my mother’s,” Fox revealed. “You can’t make it up. I have pictures of President Clinton holding my 5-year-old daughter. The whole thing is just such an incestuous funny story.”
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former U.S. President George W. Bush Jan. 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C.(Chip Somodevilla/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Fox also shared that she was close with Elizabeth Ward, Miss America 1982, who later alleged she had a romantic encounter with Clinton.
Despite all the social ties, Fox said she never brought up the moment Sheen described in his memoir when Clinton allegedly whispered to an aide.
Fox admitted she hadn’t thought about the Clinton encounter until Sheen wrote about the incident in his memoir.
At the time, “there was no ‘Me Too‘ yet, so I was used to it. I laughed it off.”
Bill Clinton was the governor of Arkansas before becoming president. (Getty Images)
Reflecting on the moment, Fox acknowledged how it might have landed from Sheen’s perspective, saying it was “maybe creepy for Charlie, but I grew up around politics. … I guess having somebody recognize your girlfriend could be creepy if they’re at a position of power.”
But she was quick to clarify with Fox News Digital, “It was definitely not a Monica Lewinsky moment. Let’s put it that way.”
The “Two and a Half Men” star additionally shared that he tried to tell his story back in 1999 while in rehab, but no one believed him.
“I was still pretty faded on detox meds and no one believed me,” he penned. “I literally said out loud to the group huddled around the TV, ‘It’s kool, I’ll put it in a book one day and you can all go f— yourselves.’ (And here we are).”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Clinton for comment.
Charlie Sheen riding on a subway train in New York City in October 1984.(Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images)
While Fox continued to open up about her past relationship with Sheen, she shared why she’s still proud of the actor today.
“My relationship with Charlie Sheen, I was his girlfriend for about two and a half years,” she explained to Fox News Digital. “It was like the beginning of his fame, and it was before he really started doing hard drugs and all of that.”
While the pair eventually went their separate ways, Fox said they stayed connected.
“We did remain friends, and I have a tremendous amount of love and respect for that family,” she shared.
And now, as Sheen turns the page with a new memoir and documentary, Fox said she’s nothing but supportive.
“I’m also incredibly proud of Charlie because he’s really taking accountability. And it’s very brave what he’s done, and I just take my hat off to him,” she told Fox News Digital.
“I think he did a really good job with the doc, and the memoir is lovely as well. And I’m very appreciative of all the kind things he said about me.”
Stephanie Giang-Paunon is an Entertainment Writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to stephanie.giang@fox.com and on Twitter: @SGiangPaunon.
Charlie Sheen claimed that former U.S. President Bill Clinton once tried to make a move on his girlfriend in the 1980s.
In his new memoir “The Book of Sheen,” the 60-year-old actor recalled meeting the 79-year-old politician, who was then the governor of Arkansas, while Sheen was filming the 1987 movie “Three for the Road” in the state’s capital city of Little Rock.
Sheen wrote that he and his co-stars Alan Ruck and Kerri Green were part of a small group from the film who were invited to the governor’s mansion for a photo op. At the time, Sheen was dating actress Dolly Fox, who joined them for the outing.
“It was pretty surreal as Governor Clinton gave me a pair of red and-white Razorback shoes, intentionally tacky and modeled after the mascot of Arkansas’ sports teams,” Sheen remembered.
Charlie Sheen alleged that Bill Clinton tried to hit on his girlfriend Dolly Fox in the 1980s. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images; Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for The New York Times)
Sheen recalled being informed by Ruck, with whom he had co-starred in 1986’s “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” that Clinton had allegedly shown interest in Fox.
“I was answering a reporter’s questions when Ruck overheard Clinton whisper to one of his aides: ‘Find out what you can about the brunette.’ The brunette was Dolly, and to this day Alan swears it was an exact quote,’” Sheen claimed.
“I felt bad for Dolly to be objectified and skeeved-out like that, but still had to take some pride in ‘Bubba’ fancying my gal,” the “Two and a Half Men” star wrote of the alleged interaction.
“Alan gave Dolly the rundown in the bar later on that same night,” he continued. “To her credit, she laughed and was actually flattered.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Clinton and Ruck’s representatives for comment.
Sheen recalled bringing Fox to the governor’s mansion in Arkansas while he was filming 1987’s “Three for the Road.”(Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
Clinton has been married to former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, 77, since 1975. The couple share daughter Chelsea Clinton, 45.
In the mid-1990s, Clinton, who was president at the time, had an affair with then White House intern Monica Lewinsky. After their relationship came to light in 1998, Clinton initially denied the affair.
Later, under oath and with physical evidence including Lewinsky’s infamous blue dress, he admitted to an “inappropriate relationship.” The scandal led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, but he was acquitted by the Senate and finished his term.
In his memoir, Sheen referenced the affair and claimed that the alleged incident involving Fox was indicative that Clinton’s “behavior” preceded the highly-publicized scandal.
“Clearly the behavior that transformed a harmless intern a few years later into a household name had been in play long before her blue dress became famous,” he alleged. “It was quite the moment in time to be ringside for that slice of creepy history.”
Clinton was the governor of Arkansas before becoming president. (Getty Images)
Sheen wrote that he recounted the story during a stint in rehab while the Clinton-Lewinsky impeachment proceedings were being televised from late 1998 to early 1999.
“Years later in rehab, while watching the Lewinsky hearings play out, I shared the Clinton–Dolly story with my fellow ’habbers,” he recalled. “I was still pretty faded on detox meds and no one believed me.”
“I literally said out loud to the group huddled around the TV, ‘It’s kool, I’ll put it in a book one day and you can all go f— yourselves.’ (And here we are.),” Sheen added.
The “Anger Management” star recalled that “Little Rock was the beginning of the end for me and Dolly, and it had nothing to do with the governor.” Sheen wrote that he and Fox had a “peaceful” split after she “found out about a few of my indiscretions.”
Sheen’s memoir was released on Sept. 9. (Michael Buckner)
Sheen has been married three times. He and his first wife, Donna Peele, tied the knot in 1995 but divorced less than a year later. Sheen and Denise Richards were married from 2002 to 2006, and they share daughters Sami, 21, and Lola, 20.
The Emmy Award winner wed Brooke Mueller in 2008, but they split in 2011. The two are parents to 16-year-old sons Bob and Max.
In “The Book of Sheen,” Sheen detailed other encounters with famous figures as well as his childhood in Hollywood, his career highs and lows, his marriages, his struggles with substance abuse and sex addiction and his path to sobriety.
“The Book of Sheen,” was published Sept. 9 and his documentary series “aka Charlie Sheen” began streaming on Netflix Sept. 10.
Ashley Hume is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to ashley.hume@fox.com and on Twitter: @ashleyhume
Jon Cryer, who played Charlie Sheen‘s on-screen brother in Two and a Half Men, recently revealed that he got only a fraction of Sheen’s pay, pointing out the major discrepancy in the pay grade.
Jon Cryer says he earned ‘a third’ of Charlie Sheen’s salary on Two and a Half Men’
Just before his infamous public firing and struggle with substance abuse, Charlie Sheen secured a huge pay bump, taking his salary to a whopping $1.9 million for each 22-minute episode (via Forbes). At the time, Sheen was also reportedly struggling with his personal life and addiction. Cryer recalled the time in Netflix’s new documentary, aka Charlie Sheen.
“He’s in the midst of falling apart in every way I can imagine,” Cryer said in the documentary (via E!), “And he’s renegotiating his contract for another year of a show that I’m supposed to be on too.” Cryer even compared Sheen to the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who received foreign aid amidst political tension with other countries.
Sheen’s behavior allegedly turned even more erratic after his rehab stint, and Cryer believes that this was one of the reasons why he got such a huge pay bump. “Well, that’s what happened here,” Cryer said. “His negotiations went off the charts because his life was falling apart. Me, whose life was pretty good at that time, I got a third of that.”
The show went on from 2003 to 2015 and got cancelled after the 12th season. Throughout its run, the series remained popular among viewers and received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, who praised the chemistry between the lead actors and humor, among other things.
Charlie Sheen revealed his true thoughts about the Corey Haim allegations in his new Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen. The Two and a Half Men actor went into detail about his drug abuse and the media scrutiny that revolved around his controversial actions.
Corey Haim starred in the titular role of 1986’s Lucas with Charlie Sheen and Kerri Green. Allegations of Charlie Sheen sexually abusing Corey Haim as a child on set came out in 2017. “People think of me as a concept, as a moment in time,” he reflected in the documentary. “But I’m a person. And this? This never happened.”
What happened to Charlie Sheen & Corey Haim?
In 2017, Charlie Sheen sued The National Enquirer for defamation after the newspaper posted an interview with Dominick Brascia who alleged that Sheen sodomized Haim while they were filming the movie Lucas. According to court documents obtained by TMZ, he article claimed Sheen and Haim smoked pot and had anal sex. The article blames Sheen for putting Haim on a path of drug abuse, which sent him to an early grave. Haim died of pneumonia in 2010.
Sheen in a statement: “In my nearly 35 years as a celebrated entertainer, I have been nothing shy of a forthright, noble and valiant courier of the truth. Consistently admitting and owning a laundry list of shortcomings, wrongdoings and indiscretions this traveler hath traveled — however, every man has a breaking point. These radically groundless and unfounded allegations end now. I now take a passionate stand against those who wish to even entertain the sick and twisted lies against me. GAME OVER.”
Haim’s mother, Judy, went on The Dr. Oz Show and claimed that Brascia was the one who abused her child. “When my son was 13, he’s not gonna go and ask Charlie Sheen to go and sleep with him,” she said, per The Wrap. “I have to tell you that this guy Dominick is the guy that abused my son. You know how I know that? Because my son said so. He said so on ‘The Two Coreys,’”
Corey Feldman, who starred with Haim in The Two Coreys, explained in his memoir Coreyography, that he and Haim had been sexually abused by people in the industry. “There are people that did this to me and Corey that are still working, they’re still out there, and they’re some of the most rich and powerful people in this business. And they do not want what I’m saying right now. They want me dead,” Feldman, 46, told The View while promoting the book at the time.
Corey Feldman made a documentary about the sexual abuse he and his co-star had when they were children called My Truth: The Rape of 2 Coreys. The documentary describes the allegations against Sheen.
Sheen addressed those specific allegations in his documentary. “Absolutely f—king bulls—t,” Sheen says. “I should have taken legal action against Feldman. But I didn’t feel like giving that clown that much more credit. We were friends back in a day or so I thought. It’s a piece of vile fiction. The guy’s mom came out and said this is impossible.” aka Charlie Sheen director Andrew Renzi also touched upon the allegations in an interview with Netflix’s Tudum. “There were questions around the credibility of this. I knew it was important to address because we wanted to be open about it. Corey’s version is in his doc. And Corey Haim’s mother disputed the claim. She said, ‘It didn’t happen.’ ”
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
Charlie Sheen’s history with substance abuse dates back decades.
Sheen, 60, reflected on his addiction journey and the way his famous family organized an intervention in the early ’90s in the new Netflix documentary, “aka Charlie Sheen.”
The “Two and a Half Men” actor recalled receiving an invitation to celebrate his father Martin Sheen’s 50th birthday, only to arrive for his own intervention, which included a pep talk from Clint Eastwood.
The “Major League” actor remembered, “She brings me into the house, and I’m looking for balloons, a cake, funny hats … And as I come around the corner, I see the living room has this really expertly organized circle of people.”
Sheen said the group was “a weird mix,” and included his seventh-grade history teacher, yoga instructor, Rob Lowe, and his siblings.
Charlie Sheen’s “The Rookie” co-star, Clint Eastwood, helped convince him to go to rehab in the ’90s.(Ron Galella, Ltd.)
Rob Lowe and Charlie Sheen have been friends for years, and grew up in the entertainment industry together.(L. Cohen/WireImage)
His longtime friend, Sean Penn, did not participate. Penn said in the docuseries that he was “never involved with those interventions” due to his own personal struggles.
“I was not, you know, walking a perfect trail of my own in some regards,” Penn said.
Sheen remembered staying mostly silent during the “emotional” day, where his friends and family read letters.
Charlie Sheen and Clint Eastwood worked together on the 1990 police procedural, “The Rookie.” (Murray Close/Sygma/Sygma)
“There’s a lot to process,” he said. “I’d kind of heard about these things, but never been this close to an intervention.” Sheen requested time away from the group to think about going into treatment, but “they said, ‘No. This is a decision we’ve made for you that has to happen today.’”
He added, “I was figuring, ‘If I just agree to this, just to get out of this situation, I can probably hatch a plan somewhere away from here.’”
Sheen was deep in thought on ways to avoid getting treatment until his dad walked out of his office and said, “There’s someone on the phone who wants to talk to you.”
The “Platoon” star took the phone expecting a family member, and knew exactly who he was speaking to the second he heard the tone.
Charlie Sheen detailed his sobriety journey in the new Netflix docuseries, “aka Charlie Sheen.”(Michael Buckner)
“It’s a very recognizable, very globally familiar voice,” he said. “It’s Clint.”
He added, “[Clint] said something like, ‘You’ve got to get the train back on the tracks, kid … You’re worth saving.’ It was really powerful. I thanked him, gave the phone back to Dad and said, ‘All right, let’s go.’”
Sheen finally got clean in 2017. “You have to be willing,” he told People magazine. “I keep a [mental list] of the worst, most shameful things I’ve done, and I can look at that in my head if I feel like having a drink.”
Charlie Sheen has had a lot of ups and downs in his life. One of those was his contentious divorce with his first wife Denise Richards.
Sheen was married to Richards from 2002 to 2006, after they met while filming Good Advice in 2000. “Everyone told me not to go out with him, but I didn’t want to judge him based on the tabloids,” says Richards told People. “I judged him as the man I met. I said ‘Well, unless he murdered someone, I can’t judge him for the past.’”
The two share daughters Sami and Lola, but their divorce was a major battle for the Two and a Half Men star. “Despite everything we went through, we can have a sense of humor about all the s–t we went through,” she told the outlet.
Why Did Charlie Sheen & Denise Richards divorce?
Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards divorced due to the actor’s substance issues. “He had been sober for about four years and very committed to his sobriety,” Richards said during an episode of Bravo’s Denise Richards & Her Wild Things, “and I never thought someone that committed could fall off and fall back into that because I, at the time, hadn’t really been around it.”
She also recalled that one “awful” night led her to pack up her stuff and led her to file for “divorce in between dropping them off at the hotel and a table reading.”
The two attempted to reconcile in 2006, but things became worse amid a nasty custody battle, and the actress accused her husband at the time of “inappropriate behavior … and conduct,” including “his attraction to underage women and his sexual explicitness on the internet, including revealing his private parts.”
Sheen countered in a statement: “Clearly the mother of my children has no interest in responsible co-parenting when it comes to my relationship with our girls.”
Richards also claimed that Sheen told her “”I hope you f—ing die, b—ch,” when he was caught looking at several porn sites. She subsequently filed a restraining order and a judge ordered him to stay 300 feet away from her and their daughters.
They finally reached a divorce settlement in Nov. 2006 with their reps saying, “Denise and Charlie are working with the Courts to privately resolve their differences regarding their children. They hope to resolve this matter outside of the public forum and will both continue to make every effort in this regard.”
The former couple was also embroiled in a $1.2 million legal battle in 2016, after alleging that he hadn’t been abiding by the terms of a trust he set up for their kids. However, by the end of the year, they seemed to clear the air. Richards posted a photo from a family dinner with Sheen, Sami, Lola and Eloise, writing, “We’ve had a colorful year …at the end of the day we’re still a family.”
The two have a very cordial relationship today, and Richards invited Sheen to her nuptials with her new husband Aaron Pyphers.
On his documentary’s film premiere, Richards posed on the carpet with her ex. She captioned an Instagram post, “We both looked at each other on the red carpet and just laughed. Charlie asked, “Is it 2002?” and I said, “It sure feels like it.” Who would have thought? What a journey we’ve had- so many ups and downs. But when life gets tough, deep down we both know we can count on each other. I’m so proud of him, and truly honored he asked me to be part of his story. Congrats, Charles ❤️”
Charlie Sheen used to be one of the most talked-about celebrities in the early 2000s. But after being away from the spotlight, he’s back to tell his side of the story with a new memoir and documentary out.
He’s regarded as one of the most successful actors (also nepo baby as the son of Martin Sheen and brother of Emilio Estevez), but in the past couple of decades, a life full of controversy has cast him to the sidelines. “It’s not about me setting the record straight or righting all the wrongs of my past,” Sheen told People about releasing The Book of Sheen and his Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen, consecutively.
“Most of my 50s were spent apologizing to the people I hurt. I also didn’t want to write from the place of being a victim,” he continued. “I wasn’t, and I own everything I did. It’s just me, finally telling the stories in the way they actually happened. The stories I can remember, anyway.”
Those stories have shaped his legacy and also have affected where his net worth is today.
What is Charlie Sheen’s net worth?
Charlie Sheen’s net worth is currently $3 million according to Celebrity Net Worth. The site also reported that his net worth peaked at $150 million when he starred in Two and a Half Men. He had a 5% stake in the show, until he sold his profit participation rights in 2016 for nearly $27 million, meaning he could no longer earn residuals from the show. Court documents showed that he owed $12 million in debts.
After he was fired from the CBS sitcom, he made a 10/90 deal to star in the FX show Anger Management. The deal discloses an unusually large percentage of syndication ownership points, and if 10 episodes of the show had good ratings, then 90 more would be ordered. TMZ reported that Sheen had not received a single payment from his syndication deal, and he was owed $50 million.
Sheen lost an abundance of his net worth during his several controversies, divorce fees, and other legal battles. In 2019, his second wife, Denise Richards, claimed that Sheen owed her $450,000 in support payments. At the height of his drug addiction, he revealed to Good Morning America that he had sex with men, and that they extorted him for their silence. “It did come with a tremendous amount of extortion,” Sheen told GMA host Michael Strahan. “And so at the time, I was just like, ‘Alright, let’s just pay to keep it quiet. And just hope it just stays over there, make it go away, you know? Make it go away.’”
Sheen was also a regular at betting. A 2006 sworn declaration from Denise Richards alleged that the actor bet on sports “every day,” admitted losing “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in money.
How much did Charlie Sheen earn on Two and a Half Men?
Charlie Sheen reportedly earned $800,000 per episode from season 1 and earned his way up to $1.8 million during his final season. At the height of its success, it would total to about $40 million per season. That would make him the fourth-highest-earning actor of all time, behind Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Aniston, and Reese Witherspoon.
Sheen was fired from the show after drug abuse and a long battle against the show’s creator Chuck Lorre. At the time, he told TMZ: “This is very good news […] now I can take all of the bazillions, never have to look at whatshisc–-k again and I never have to put on those silly shirts for as long as this warlock exists in the terrestrial dimension.”
However, things between the two eased, with Sheen returning to work with Lorre on his show Bookie. “We had a wonderful relationship for over eight years on Two and a Half Men. And then things happened,” he told People. “And so to find our way back to having that friendship again, and I’m a big admirer of his work, I always have been. It’s never been about the work. The work is impeccable.”
Charlie Sheen talked about his years of drug addiction on Tuesday night, saying he was doing so many drugs at one point that he was “cut off” by the cartel supplying him.
“The amount that they were selling to [his drug dealer] Marco [Abeyta] … the amount that he kept requesting from them at the frequency that he was asking for … they had never transferred that to someone who wasn’t dealing,” Sheen explained to Jesse Watters in an interview on “Primetime.”
Sheen added that the cartel believed he was “blowing through this stuff so freaking fast, he’s dealing without our permission.”
He added that to be allowed by the cartel to deal, “You’ve got to get permission from the shot callers.”
Charlie Sheen talked about his years of drug addiction on Tuesday night, saying he was doing so many drugs at one point that he was “cut off” by the cartel supplying him. (Dominik Bindl/Getty Images)
He also discussed getting sent to rehab by CBS when he was starring on the sitcom “Two and a Half Men.”
“They sent the jet hoping I would get on it and get the rehab,” he told Watters. “That’s when I told [former CBS CEO and chairman], Les Moonves, ‘I appreciate this. You have my word, I’m going to shut it down, but I’m going to do it here at home.’”
He said it was the first time the jet had been offered to anyone in the eight years he was on the show.
“There was no bigger party to attend. There was no higher high left. And I just felt like I’d been letting people down for too long and myself included in that, and it just lost its luster. It lost its effect. It lost its seat at the table.”
— Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen with Jon Cryer on “Two and a Half Men.”(Greg Gayne/CBS via Getty Images)
He was then fired from the show and replaced by Ashton Kutcher in 2011.
Sheen said he’s almost eight years sober now. (Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Project Angel Food)
Sheen said he’s almost eight years sober now.
“It stopped working,” he said of why he decided to stop doing drugs. “I had to get to a place I had to make the decision, you know, and I had to do it for myself first, my children second, and then the rest of my family.”
He added, “There was nothing left. There was no bigger party to attend. There was no higher high left. And I just felt like I’d been letting people down for too long and myself included in that, and it just lost its luster. It lost its effect. It lost its seat at the table.”
On Sept. 9, the Hollywood actor will release his autobiography (The Book of Sheen: A Memoir), paired with a documentary about his life (aka Charlie Sheen) premiering on Netflix on Sept. 10.
Sheen (née Carlos Irwin Estevez) has led a life of very public highs and lows that are rich material for an engaging read — from early life with a famous father, to his blockbuster film career in the 1980s, to a series of failed relationships, domestic abuse charges, a predilection for sex workers and a drug addiction that nearly killed him. The roller coaster kept climbing higher and dropping lower until a decade and a half ago, when the film and TV star hit a new peak, then imploded.
In 2010, Charlie Sheen began earning $1.8 million per episode of Two and a Half Men — making him the highest-paid male TV star to this day. Yet, during that same period, as he recounts in the book under a brief subchapter titled “2009-2011”, the stress of his divorce from actress Denise Richards sent Sheen back onto drugs. When CBS head Les Moonves learned of it, he offered the network’s corporate jet to send Sheen to rehab, but the actor turned him down to get sober at home instead.
Sheen says he did kick illegal substances during that time, and attributes his ensuing erratic behavior to heavy use of testosterone cream. Following a blow-up with Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre, Sheen’s removal from the show, he was banned from the Warner Bros. lot, and in a pair of now-infamous interviews with NBC and ABC ranted about his “tiger blood” and “Adonis DNA” while refuting bipolar claims (“I’m bi-winning“) and drug relapse claims (“I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available, because if you try it once, you will die and your children will weep over your exploded body. Too much?”), and finally, a divorce from his third wife, Brooke Mueller. (Hell of a rough year.)
The actor stayed out of the headlines for a while, only to reappear in 2015 when he disclosed that he is HIV positive.
Sheen has since laid low, and claims to be sober and to have straightened his life out — even appearing sporadically in film and TV roles.
Now, as the Hollywood veteran turns 60, he is telling his side of the story, and doing so with undeniable flair. His publisher, Gallery books, insists he did not use a ghost writer. And while tiger blood may no longer course through his veins, he’s just as adept at grabbing your attention. Here are some of the more memorable passages:
On playing ping-pong as a 10-year-old with O.J. Simpson:
“Please understand that I’m still describing his ping-pong skills when I say: His right hand was fukken lethal [sic].”
The young Sheen was on set with his father and co-star O.J. Simpson. Sheen challenged Simpson to a ping-pong match. It lasted over 21 sets, with Sheen holding his own, until the ultra-competitive Simpson switched hands with his paddle and unleashed a fury on the child to win.
On losing his virginity as a high school sophomore to a Las Vegas escort named Candy:
“She was Ann-Margret in her prime with a Mastercard swiper. (I didn’t care that the swipe took longer than the sex.)”
Sheen and a high school buddy joined Sheen’s father, Martin Sheen, on a trip to Las Vegas, and slept in an adjoining hotel room. Young Charlie snuck into his father’s room one night to steal his dad’s credit card and used it to pay an escort for her services. (Sheen makes sure to clarify that he went first.)
On Johnny Depp getting him hooked on cigarettes during the filming of Platoon:
“He had successfully converted one nonsmoker on each of his previous three films.”
Sheen claims that, by the time he quit smoking in 2019, he had inhaled some 25 miles of cigarettes laid butt to tip. It was Johnny Depp who introduced Sheen (then a nonsmoker) to the habit. And for that, Sheen says he’ll send Depp the bill for a new lung “should I ever need one.”
On his 1992 introduction to crack through an ex-girlfriend named Sandy:
“Sandy and that drug rewired my frontal cortex into light-speed oneness times two.”
Sheen writes that his introduction to crack cocaine came via a woman he dated briefly, whom he calls Sandy. One night, after they’d stopped dating, Sandy called Sheen to pick her up from some situation she was in. Sheen did, and took her back home with him to Malibu. It was there, in bed, that Sandy passed Sheen a crack pipe and told him not to overthink it and just inhale.
On his near-fatal cocaine overdose in 1998:
“I didn’t have to wait for the second dose to kick in; they both hit me at the same time.”
In an attempt to get sober, Sheen was clearing out his house of drugs when he came across some needles and a baggie of cocaine. Looking to emulate movies like Trainspotting, he boiled the coke into a liquid and injected himself. Feeling nothing, he administered a second dose, which led to a near-fatal overdose. Sheen’s live-in bodyguard, Zip, called 911, and Sheen claims the paramedics alerted the media, such that when he came to in the ambulance, then arrived at the hospital, press was already there.
On facing domestic abuse charges by an ex-girlfriend in 1997:
“In a move to defend myself — my eyes more specifically, as she was trying to stab them with her jagged car keys — I got behind her …”
As Sheen recounts it, he and a girlfriend he refers to as “Jane” (timing and details would suggest “Jane” is Brittany Ashland) were having a normal evening when Jane made a disparaging comment about a photo of Sheen’s then 13-year-old daughter, Cassandra. Sheen then called a friend to pick up Jane and take her home, let slip an insult at her, and that’s when Jane began to attack him. As Sheen alleges, he acted in self-dense, and Jane’s cut lip (which required seven stitches) just sort of happened in the scuffle.
On Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss:
“I was watching myself watching Heidi stare at me with a look of betrayal and sadness.”
Sheen first met Fleiss in a VIP lounge called On the Rox (Steve Bing introduced them). He quickly fell in with her and her escort service, and when money ran out, he would use checks (and American Express Travelers Cheques, at that) to pay Fleiss and those in her employ. With an evident sense of shame, Sheen recalls cutting a deal with the feds for immunity, and spilling the details to law enforcement with Fleiss and her lawyers in the room. Sheen then claims the feds tried to use him as their star witness, and threatened to throw the book at him if he didn’t agree. When he asked to see the evidence against him, the feds let up.
On being drunk on scotch while flying an Air France jet with passengers aboard:
“Leaning the yoke ever so slightly to the left, I felt like the craft was reading my mind …”
On the flight home from his French honeymoon (and in the heat of a dispute with his first wife, Donna Peele), Sheen downed eight shots of scotch, only to then be invited to the cockpit by the starstruck crew of the aircraft. The pilot dressed Sheen up in his uniform, then both he and the co-pilot took turns snapping photos with Sheen. The plane in autopilot and the pilot’s seat empty, Sheen asked if he could sit. The pilots agreed, took the plane off autopilot, and a very drunk Sheen was able to fly and steer the A330 somewhere over the Atlantic with 200 other passengers onboard.
On discovering his HIV diagnosis:
“I’d been in that state for fifty hours, doing everything I could to avoid the hospital.”
A series of excruciating headaches and a sensation of fire in his veins led Sheen to believe he was on the brink of death. Finally, after over two days of it, sure he’d learn he had spinal meningitis or brain cancer or something fatal, he went to the hospital. Instead, he learned he had HIV.
On his sexual encounters with other men (or “the other side of the menu”):
“Was some of it fun? You betcha. Was the ‘other side’ in play without crack? Never.”
Though he only confirms it in a TV interview, Sheen seems to suggest in this passage that he had sexual encounters with men while on crack, and that those encounters led to extortion attempts.
EXCLUSIVE: I sit down for breakfast with Charlie Sheen not exactly knowing what to expect. His bookend episodes of Bookiethat reunited him with Two And a Half Men‘s Chuck Lorre remind of what was lost after the actor’s inexplicable, substance-fueled “Tiger Blood” meltdown led to an abrupt parting of the ways and separating him from one of sitcom TV’s highest-ever salaries at a reported $1.8 million an episode. It has been a dozen years since then, and I come in harboring my own feelings. Basically, Two And a Half Men (the Charlie Harper Years) have been my reliable go-to at the end of most long days in the trenches. I can practically recite the dialogue along with Sheen, Jon Cryer, Angus T. Jones, as well as Holland Taylor (their mom), Melanie Lynskey (Charlie’s stalker), Marin Hinkle (Alan Harper’s ex), and the late Conchata Ferrell, who played the housekeeper Berta. It was sad watching those final episodes, as you saw the suave ladies man Charlie Harper’s face grow gaunt and know the final implosion was near.
We met because I’d been supportive of The Way, the inspiring road-trip film his brother Emilio Estevez wrote and directed and their father Martin Sheen starred in. What I didn’t expect was to find myself sitting across from the old Charlie Sheen, and how much he hopes this trial run playing himself in Bookie — a Max sitcom led by Sebastian Maniscalco and Omar J. Dorsey (Sheen is back for the Season 1 finale next week) — leads to a chance at redemption with Lorre, who created Bookie with Nick Bakay and Men with Lee Aronsohn.
Sheen would like nothing more than another shot in the sitcom ring, to show that last time was an aberration. He is serious enough that after watching his Bookie scenes, Sheen booked himself for a bit of cosmetic surgery to fix some sagging skin on his neck he worried would be distracting to viewers. Here, he discusses that, his career and future hopes, sadness over Matthew Perry, sports betting and the time he went on a losing streak for the ages with the bookies.
DEADLINE: It was an easy yes when Chuck Lorre asked you to return?
CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. I mean, save for asking Chuck to not have me actually in rehab, as a patient. I felt like that would be looking back and he totally agreed. And then he came up with, well, let’s create a mislead. You’re still going to a rehab, but you’re not a client; but membership has its privileges because you’re allowed to use the room for the game. I actually pitched the card game and then he turned it into an homage to the Two And a Half Men card game in that pilot episode, with Angus there and all. And it happened almost 20 years to the day we shot that.
DEADLINE: I am surprised Jon Cryer wasn’t lurking in the background…
SHEEN: It was all a cosmic trip; Jon’s there in spirit and he’s mentioned.
DEADLINE: I’ve watched your seven seasons on that show — I could recite the jokes. It felt like you guys could have just gone on for 10 years if you wanted to.
SHEEN: Yeah, if I hadn’t f*cked everything up, we could have done it as long as we wanted to. So they say, don’t live in regret, but you have to honor it. You have to learn from it. Well…
‘Two And a Half Men’
Warner Bros. 2023
DEADLINE: When you look back and you replay everything in your mind, does Two And a Half Men play back as great years? Or is that eclipsed by, how could I have f*cked this…
SHEEN: Up? Yeah, there are a lot of great memories. Years of great memories, when we were cooking with gas and we were delivering something that people were really invested in, really enjoying, and were really connected to. And we didn’t phone it in. I mean, we were working really hard on that show, in every aspect of the production, from the writers room to the crew, to the cast. Everybody. We knew what we had, and the value of taking the time to create it properly.
And I knew the rules, from day one. Well, when I say I knew the rules is just what was required of me to contribute to this workplace, what was expected of me. And so when I started butting up against those, the rules never changed. I would look at it from an athletic point of view. It’s like we practice all week and then Friday night was game night and you got to play for the name on the front of the jersey, not the back. And then, somewhere along the way, I decided that the rules no longer applied to me. And that was not fair to the system that was in place.
DEADLINE: If I’m being honest, in those later episodes you can see your face changes and gets gaunt. We could see you going down a dark road and maybe being unable to say, I need help…
SHEEN: There was a couple of times when I did pull myself out of it. I went and sought help and got better and came back and then … yeah, I don’t know why I was unable to maintain that. And anytime external elements contaminate the main thing, I would look for someone to blame. And that’s not fair. It’s not fair to Chuck. It’s not fair to the show. I went through two divorces, had four kids during that show. There was a lot of sh*t in my personal life that was a little bit distracting. But you got to leave that stuff at the doorstep of the stage door, right? That’s hard, but you got to park it. It is hard. It is hard. But yeah, there was a moment when I was in rehab and I guess we’d finished Season 7, or we were trying to finish Season 7 and we got the call for the renegotiation. And I was on the phone with my manager and I think one of the agents. And I said, I don’t know, man. I feel like we might’ve reached our limit here. And I’m hearing no, no, no, man, there’s so many more stories to tell. Translation: money to be made for them.
DEADLINE: Reports ballparked your pay for that season as $1.8 million per episode or better…
SHEEN: I mean, sure, sure. It’s a lot of money. And I said, I don’t know guys. My gut is screaming that if I go back, it’s going to go horribly wrong. I actually said that, and they were like, well, I can also go perfectly fabulous. I’m like, yeah, but that’s not the message I’m getting from my gut. So did I manifest that or did I just get a signal from the future? Maybe it was time. So, do you bow out? No! We cut the new deal and everybody was happy and then everything went horribly. Everything went horribly.
DEADLINE: You always had that mischievous bad boy gleam in the eye, from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to Spin City when you replaced Michael J. Fox when he left for health reasons. Were you surprised at how quickly you took to the sitcom format, when Two And a Half Men launched so seamlessly?
SHEEN: It’s what I grew up watching. It’s what I grew up really invested in as a form of entertainment. That was very comforting for me. You got to see the same people in the same environments, trying to navigate their fictional lives, and there was always something that you could find in your own life that connected to it. That connected to the themes on the shows I was watching. It was just part of my childhood. When I finally got the opportunity to do it, it was terrifying. I had done one episode of Friends, and that was a really long week for me. I remember finishing that and the people were great, from the showrunners to the cast and the audience. It was a great night. But I left there thinking, okay, I checked that box.
DEADLINE: Harder than drama?
SHEEN: I’d never done theater. I had no sense of interacting with an audience or letting them be part of it.
Lisa Kudrow and Charlie Sheen on ‘Friends’
Warner Bros. / Courtesy: Everett Collection
DEADLINE: But an episode of Friends would seem like nothing compared to what you’d been through hard ones including Platoon, which had to be your version of what your dad went through in Apocalypse Now…
SHEEN: That was tough, but this was uncomfortable because there was nowhere to hide. At least on Platoon, you could always find, I don’t know, a foxhole or a tree, to duck behind, and there was no chicken exit here. There’s usually a chicken exit making a movie, unless you’re running into a battlefield and it’s like they’ve prepared it the entire day and you’ve rehearsed it 20 times, and it’s go time. But man, once the lights go down on a sitcom stage and you hear that bell…you got to get that breath that settles vitals, and just kind of do it. I could usually tell three lines into the first scene pretty much how the whole night was going to go, if I was riding that wave, if I was a part of it, or if I was just swimming for my life. It took Spin City for me to figure it out. I think Spin City was the perfect opportunity for me to really experience that medium in a way that I was able to get pretty comfortable with an audience, with that kind of material where it’s pretty clear what your responsibilities are, and as long as you don’t get in the way of the material and just know your role.
(L-R) Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen and Tom Berenger in ‘Platoon’
Everett Collection
I’ve always been a fan of being the anchor, and I’ve been fortunate enough that the people that have written for me saw that as my strength. It’s important to have an anchor because all the craziness that goes on around that, I’m able to center things or at least do my darnedest to.
DEADLINE: Charlie Harper was some dysfunctional anchor…
SHEEN: I was an anchor that was adrift. But I had the benefit of, geez, the greatest co-star, a guy could ever ask for. I say co-star, but I mean teammate. You know what I’m saying? Playing with Jon, playing off of the things he was doing, it was magical. When they said they were auditioning him, I was like, but he’s got a resume for decades. And they said, well, we need to see you guys together. I’m like, just watch Hot Shots. But that first time, it was Chuck, Jon and myself, and for the first time, we ran a scene together pretty much cold.
It was a moment that people speak of. You’re like, really? Yeah. I felt it. Chuck felt, I know Jon felt it.
DEADLINE: Was it a particular scene?
SHEEN: I think it’s in the living room, when I give the speech on the stairs and then talking about that he has his own sheets. It’s the scene that really defined who these guys are, early on.
DEADLINE: What made it exceptional?
SHEEN: There was never a moment where Jon said, ‘Hey, if you can do this moment like that, I’m going to do the next one.’ Nobody planned anything. I didn’t say, Hey Jon, can I get a longer beat here? No. We just read it and it was perfect. Instantly perfect, like the moment when I left Chuck’s office after our first meeting, and I just said, Hey, I need to see the script. He said, we’ll have it over in a week. And then as I was leaving, I stopped and asked, is there a title? He said, we’re thinking of calling it Two and a Half Men. And I said, wow, that sounds like a hit. And I left. So there’s those magical moments in the early part of the journey.
Conchata Ferrell and Jon Cryer on ‘Two And a Half Men’
CBS
But yeah, working again with Chuck, it has really helped me not focus so much on what went wrong, or why it went wrong, or how much damage I did, or the pain I caused. It’s been cathartic for me. It’s been therapeutic to really think about, look at the stuff that me and this gentleman did for so long before. What are you going to do? Beat yourself up for your entire life? No, no, I can’t do that. I can’t do that. You’re not going to go forward. It’s counterproductive. Yeah. But it’s important for me to own it and make demands on myself, do whatever I can do to just not dismiss any part of it. I wish I could answer really what people ask. What happened? I don’t know. I don’t truly know. Something in my mind shifted, and I was no longer the person that I liked to present in all situations…
DEADLINE: When Matthew Perry passed away, he seemed like a good guy in our conversations, and I read Sean Penn say something about that it was a shame that his struggles took too much out of his body. I thought, I’m glad Charlie pulled out of his nosedive before there was no pulling…
SHEEN: Himself out of that. You and me both. Yeah. I felt something similar when he died about, wow, you could easily be reading about me instead. That was really sad when that happened. I just read his book. About six weeks ago, and I read it in a day. No kidding. Yeah, I turned off my phone. It was so instantly accessible and engaging that I just said, this is all I want to do today. I just stayed in it and it wasn’t like I finished at 2 in the morning. I finished at 8:15.
DEADLINE: What made you not be able to put it down?
SHEEN: Because I can relate to it so much of it. Because I was reliving or I was experiencing it with him. A lot of the struggle, a lot of the obsession. When you’re at that fork in the road when there are 76 really good choices, and you go with number 77. A lot of it really spoke to me, and I knew him a little bit from out in the world, from AA occasionally, and he was lovely. He was smart and funny, and yeah, he was charming and it wasn’t always about him. He included people. He was a special cat. I wish I knew him better. I’m not saying I could have influenced some change or helped him in any way, but yeah, I just wish I knew him better.
DEADLINE: I remember doing a Playboy interview years ago with Robert Downey Jr at a time when he was trying to straighten out his life, and my, has he proven that a talented actor can do that. He mentioned being part of your crowd. Was he in your short film group?
SHEEN: I haven’t seen Oppenheimer yet, but I heard he just nailed it. We were in the same high school. But no, he wasn’t part of the home movie group that we established. That was Sean and Chris Penn, Rob and Chad Lowe, Emilio and myself. I don’t know if he grew up in Malibu or what.
DEADLINE: You all had parents in the business. Were you thinking this is where you would go?
SHEEN: Nah, we made Super 8 films, and Sean was the first to graduate. He was taking things a lot more seriously than any of us realized, because he’s out there auditioning, and then he’s suddenly working a lot, and then comes Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Bad Boys and then, boom.
DEADLINE: Were you all thinking, we’re the next generation?
SHEEN: No, no, we were just having fun. We were just trying to emulate or impersonate a lot of the stuff we were watching our parents do. Me, out growing up on sets around the world with dad, my parents gave us a Super 8 camera expecting us to go film the countryside. No, we had stories we wanted to tell. We kind of wrote them on the fly. If something worked, then we’d build on that. If it sucked, we’d start over. It just progressed like any hobby does when you’ve got…
Is that Arnold? Is that Arnold that just passed?
[Indeed, Arnold Schwarzenegger passes by outside the restaurant window.]
SHEEN: That’s pretty cool. I saw him in the mirror.
DEADLINE: He looks like he could kick both our asses…
SHEEN: Him? Yeah. But I’m going to go low. You go high. Yeah…
DEADLINE: How about you go low, and I’ll run that way toward the exit.
SHEEN: Okay. But yeah, a lot of the kids were surfing and we were making movies. It was pretty cool.
DEADLINE: It’s funny when you say, yeah, we were just doing this. I asked Sean Penn about his memory of Tom Cruise and Taps, and he said he thought Cruise was never going to make it because he was just too nice a guy.
SHEEN: He is really nice; really nice. He stayed with us for a while at my parents’ house when him and Emilio were auditioning and then preparing for The Outsiders. Tom was great, man.
DEADLINE: It happened fast for him. Was there something you saw in him that early?
SHEEN: Yeah. He had that thing. Women want to be with him, and guys want to be like him. He had that and there was an innocence that he had. So I think when the massive talent emerged, I think it caught people off guard. I think they were suddenly really pleasantly surprised at how complex the talent is within him. I know he has gone full action mode now, but there’s some performances where you want to talk about some Oscar snubs. He’s got three of them and they’re glaring: Jerry McGuire, Born on the Fourth of July and Magnolia. Those are great performance. Oh, I’m sorry. It’s four. Rain Man. There’s probably a fifth one I’m forgetting.
DEADLINE: When he got Risky Business, the first where one of you guys had a picture built around you, do you feel competitive?
SHEEN: No, I had the benefit of meeting a therapist when I was 15, somebody my mom was working with. I mean, who wants to be in therapy at 15? No one. And I remember having one session with this guy. I wasn’t even acting yet, maybe I was 16, thinking about it. And he said, unless you celebrate other people’s successes, you will never have any of your own. I was like, oh, okay. That’s the only thing I remember from the 51 minutes we spent together. So I was rooting for everyone. Yeah. I wasn’t bitter. I always felt, there’s enough jobs to go around for everybody back when meritocracy was something that mattered. Yeah.
DEADLINE: When John Hughes was making his movies, did you try out for leads in all of those?
SHEEN: No, I was in high school when Emilio invited me to the screening of The Breakfast Club. Ah, yeah. Film’s a masterpiece. Terrific film. It’s a masterpiece. And then I’d worked a little bit, I’d worked enough for Hughes to maybe have seen something, or he knew that I worked with Jennifer Grey on Red Dawn. And so she read the Ferris Bueller script. The only exposure I had of the Bueller script was sides that C Thomas Howell was rehearsing his audition. It was the shower scene, the monologue. So he was out of the room one day and I kind of just read it and thought, oh, this looks really complicated.
Jennifer Grey and Charlie Sheen in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’
DEADLINE: What role was Howell up for?
SHEEN: Ferris Bueller, before Matthew Broderick got it. I had never auditioned for John Hughes. I drove down to the set one day a couple weeks before that scene was going to be shot, and I threw on a biker jacket I borrowed from my brother Ramon. He was a smoker, so I put some cigarette ash under my eyes. I knew the scene. I drove all the way down there, and I see John Hughes walking across the parking lot. He’s leaving his trailer. He is heading to set. He was right around dusk, and he’s starting to walk past me. I hear “Mr. Hughes, I’ve got Charlie Sheen.” I’m expecting him to then say, “Oh, great, you’re here. Okay, let’s go read the scene.” Instead, he doesn’t break stride. He’s like, “Oh, hey, okay, you look great, kid. I’ll see you in a couple weeks.” And he kept going. And I was like, okay, I guess that means I got the job. That was my audition. The morning we shot, I overslept. I was up super late, not even partying, just I’m wanting to look tired for this role. These days, that requires no effort. I got single-dad eyes, and that’s a whole other chapter. So I was up to late at the time for me, it was 1 a.m. I had to get up at 5, get on the road by 6, and I woke up and it was 6:30. I woke in a panic, jumped in the car, sped down there. Jennifer Grey is in front of her trailer, staring at her watch. She’s like, “How could you fucking do this to me? I went out of my way. I put my neck on the line for you. How could you do this to me?” I go, hey, hey, hey, everybody. Breathe. Slow down. And so I go through makeup. I’m trying to just review the scene and now I know I’m doing a scene of someone that’s pissed at me in the scene and in real life, and I’m on the set and I see John Hughes. He says, “Oh, good. Okay. You’re here. Let’s get started.” He wasn’t like, you amateur, you slacker, how dare you? Don’t you know who I am? No, it was, you’re here. Let’s get started. I guess that’s a pretty cool example of a guy that just is interested in the reality of things as they’re happening. Interesting way to live life, isn’t it?
DEADLINE: Got a similar story on your Platoon director Oliver Stone. I was a cub reporter at New York Newsday, and my first big feature was on Born on the Fourth of July, which he directed with Tom Cruise as Ron Kovic. I’m 20 minutes in. I guess he sees the color drain from my face. The tape recorder isn’t taping. He says, what’s the matter? I tell him. Without a beat, he says, can you get it to work? I did. And he said, let’s start again. Now, representing that film to the Long Island paper of record was important; that’s where Kovic grew up. But I have never forgotten how gracious he was to a young reporter ready to melt through the floor. Sounds like Hughes showed you the same kind of grace.
SHEEN: That was around 39 years ago, and that’s the story I’m telling all these decades later. As opposed to a story I’m not excited to share. And that role, it was life-changing. One day you’re auditioning, the next day you’re not. It was just…cool. It shifts your focus. It doesn’t really change anything in what your goals are, what your process is, how you prepare. But yeah, it makes it a lot more fun. Can’t lie about that. To be doing something where you feel suddenly appreciated, recognized, where you feel like people value you. That’s pretty cool. It’s a pretty good thing. I think it was good to have the Bueller moment; I think the universe was kind of giving me a little peek at what might be coming. Platoon and then Wall Street. There’s BP and AP, before Platoon and after Platoon. Everything changed, like overnight.
DEADLINE: In the jungle, stuff blowing up all around you. What was the hardest thing about making that movie?
SHEEN: Just the endurance. It wasn’t like the scenes were so long to memorize. It was the physical endurance and trying to find, there’s a couple of moments that get super emotional and just trying to get inside of those, and whether your process is pretend that what I’m doing makes me sad enough to show that, or I got to exhume a loved one to get to that place. Whatever that is written, it’s what the moment needs or what’s required.
‘Platoon’ director Oliver Stone on location
Orion Pictures/ Courtesy: Everett Collection
DEADLINE: What was your relationship with Oliver? Your character Chris was channeling his experiences in Vietnam, where he volunteered much to the surprise of his platoon mates who were drafted and just trying to survive the carnage and insanity…
SHEEN: That scene was with Keith David and Chris Patterson.
DEADLINE: How did Oliver Stone help pull this coming of age stuff out of you? Clearly he knew what he wanted…
SHEEN: We had to somehow develop a shorthand. We had done a full cast read-through while we were still in training camp. So he had kind of a baseline to work from just to see how far people were willing to go in a non-shooting moment. But no, the way he would speak about it, I didn’t want to put the pressure on myself that I’m playing the guy who’s standing right there, because then everything is measured, and uncomfortable. I just wanted to, if that was the case and I was playing a version of his experience, I wanted to make him proud. I wanted to please him first and me second, whatever that’s worth. And there were a lot of times in the middle of a scene or something that was really complicated, I could see him out of the corner of my eye having physical responses that he couldn’t obviously yell. He’d ruin the take. But I saw him having a joyous physical responses, he was so excited. He was rooting for his favorite team, down by five with a minute left inside the five. It was kind of cool to go home certain nights on that film and know that I was able to create a sense of satisfaction, a sense of joy, whatever he experienced by what I chose to do.
But man, we were so young, it’s really hard to, there’s the, what’s that thing they talk about? When you give a speech? There’s the one you give in your car on the way there, the one you give there and the one you give on the way home. It’s kind of the same thing with acting. There’s the scene you prepare at home, the one you do on set, and then there’s the one you do driving home. You’re never quite sure of the three. It’s like a shell game. Which one you should have gone with? I just wish that that had at had spilled over into Wall Street, the camaraderie and the connection. We were almost spiritually connected on Platoon.
DEADLINE: How was it different on Wall Street?
SHEEN: A lot different. That was a really difficult shoot, harder than Platoon in some ways. The amount of dialogue, the amount of locations, the amount of pressure that he had heaped upon himself because of the Oscars from Platoon. There was energy deep in the details. And the scene where I meet Michael Douglas…we shot that over two days, and it was 56 setups in two days. And at one point Michael kind of leans in. I’d known him for a week now. He’s like, can you think of anything different that we should do with this? He was basically saying, I’m out of ideas. I’m at the end of my rope. And I was like, I got nothing, boss. He was like, yeah, me neither. We bonded through the struggle. In Oliver’s defense, we were up against the director’s strike toward the end of the movie. So we had to shoot 16 days, in eight. This wasn’t second-unit pickups, We had to do twice the work in half the time.
(L-R) Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas in ‘Wall Street’
Everett Collection
DEADLINE: Michael Douglas is another guy who comes from a storied acting family. What kind of kinship forms from that?
SHEEN: You just brought something I never thought to engage him on because the workload was so intense. I never wanted to be that guy. It was like, “Hey, let me bring something up that makes you think about anything but what we’re supposed to be doing, because people did that to me.” I felt like I was in a dinghy in the Indian Ocean. So we never really even got into that stuff. And I don’t care, maybe if you’re De Niro, Pacino, my dad, there is something you have to work through when you first start working with someone that might make you starstruck. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, how cool and important or famous you think you are, or people tell you you are. When you’re with someone you’ve grown up watching or whose work you really appreciate, there’s a mystique that comes with it that you can’t ignore. And I know that a lot of people won’t admit that, but I know that it happens to almost everyone. I think it’s okay to honor that, to recognize it. It’s like, you meet Roy Scheider. How do you not go back to Jaws being a 10-year-old in the summer of ’75, watching that change your life forever? Yeah.
DEADLINE: Sounds like a story there…
SHEEN: It’s funny. I do have a regret about Scheider. I was 12 years old. Jaws had been in the theater for almost a year at that point. We had been in the Philippines. Dad drops me at a diner in Malibu that no longer exists. He says, I got to run to the post office. I’ll be right back. Right. At that point, I’ve seen Jaws probably 50, 60 times, no joke. In a movie theater. I probably ended up seeing it a hundred times in a movie theater, and who knows how many times at home. It was an obsession. I have tattoos. Anyway, it’s madness. So he goes to the post office, and I’m sitting there and I sense a figure sitting right next to me, and I just threw a quick glance. It’s Chief Brody, it’s Roy Scheider. And I’m frozen. I could easily said, “Hey, I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Scheider, my dad’s Martin Sheen. You guys probably have met in New York. He’s across the street. I just wanted to say hello.” I was frozen. I didn’t say a fricking word. And then I guess he was just having coffee, and he left, and dad came back. Had dad come back a minute earlier, he would have said, “Hey, Roy, this is my kid.”
Roy Scheider in ‘Jaws’
DEADLINE: Sounds like this haunted you.
SHEEN: I lived with this for years and years and years. So we do Two And a Half Men. Holland Taylor, who played my mom, is really good friends with Roy Scheider, so I tell her the story and she tells it to Roy. So at least the circle was closed, by mom. At least he knew. And he was tickled by it, thought it was the coolest thing. Yeah. Isn’t that something? But damn, it’s like there’s another thing we talk about regrets. I had all those years to reach out to someone and never did.
DEADLINE: I watch that movie obsessively. I could listen to Robert Shaw’s soliloquy about the USS Indianapolis right now and be shaken. What stands up for you?
SHEEN: All that, and, well, there were no computers. Everything they did had to be done practically. And that blows my mind. Much like Apocalypse, there were no computers. These days you can do anything. Most times, the actors leave the set, go on vacation and on to the next project. I dunno, Jaws touched something in all of us. It touched the vulnerability. And I think we could, in different viewings, see ourselves in more so in a different character than another. Yesterday, I was Quint. Today, I’m Hooper. Star Wars had a similar effect. I didn’t see it a hundred times, but as far as being taken somewhere, it just changed the way that it altered expectations forever. Talk about raising the bar. Jesus.
DEADLINE: I interviewed Ridley Scott for The Martian, when JJ Abrams was reviving Star Wars. I asked what the first one meant to him, and he said he had a movie set, and went to see Star Wars with its producer. He exited and told the guy he couldn’t do his movie, he had to do something in space. That led him to Alien.
SHEEN: And George Lucas was supposed to work on Apocalypse Now, and when that did not happen, he used the Vietnam War as the symbology for the Rebels and the Evil Empire. No kidding. Yeah. So these films that change things forever have this ear-woven, connective DNA. Also, it was Brian De Palma that told Lucas to put that scroll in the beginning. He screened it and he was like, okay, it’s great. But we don’t know who anybody is. We don’t know where we are. We don’t know why we are there. We’re fully confused. We love it, but it’s super confusing. He said, why don’t you just tell everybody, just write it out. Just say, all right, here’s what’s going on. And then start the movie. And he did. How about that?
DEADLINE: Speaking of mythology, you’re back with Chuck Lorre, at least in two episodes of The Bookie. It’s fun seeing you back. How did you like seeing yourself back?
SHEEN: It was all a surprise. I didn’t read any script I wasn’t in, so after the first one, when I finished fricking flop-sweating … watching yourself the first time with people is a nightmare. I have a fun story about that in one second. So I’m just an audience member from two through seven, actually two through eight. Usually, I’ll read the whole script, but I’m not going to micromanage, break it down like I usually do. I’m concerned with my stuff, and the other isn’t my business unless it’s mentioned in the scene I’m in. I’m along for the ride.
DEADLINE: Do you want to star in another sitcom? Would that be too much, considering how it unraveled last time?
SHEEN: So you’re asking would I do another sitcom?
DEADLINE: Yeah.
SHEEN: Yes, I would. And it wouldn’t be too much on me. It would be insanely satisfying and enjoyable. I think people would really, really get a kick out of it.
DEADLINE: Would you want do it with Chuck Lorre?
SHEEN: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. If he decided, “Hey man, let’s finish how we started,” if he said that, I’m asking where and when. I’ll read the script when it gets there, but it’s as simple as that. Because it goes back to give the people what they want. Nobody comes up to me in the street and says, “Hey man, I can’t wait to see you in a gritty drama.” Nobody says that. So I’m just basing it on what the vibe is out in the world. And everybody wants to talk about Two And a Half Men, but also Major League and the Hot Shots and Men at Work and Young Guns.
‘Bookie’
John Johnson/Max
DEADLINE: A lot of actors probably get stopped but that doesn’t mean they’d be on top of the heap like you were before it all went bad. Is there more to your ambition?
SHEEN: Yeah, I owe it to myself, first and foremost. And then whatever happens after that, whatever the results are, and if people love it or hate it, that’s out of my hands. But just on my observations, I have it on pretty good authority that they would enjoy it.
DEADLINE: But maybe you want to show you can be a good soldier again, and that others won’t have to worry not someone others have to worry about. Success takes discipline.
SHEEN: Me. Thank you. And that’s what part of doing Bookie was all about. It was an audition for accountability, responsibility, professionalism. Yeah. I was always the guy who was first to arrive and last to leave. I went in overprepared…
DEADLINE: You want to be that guy again?
SHEEN: Yeah. I want to be that guy again. And so coming back to do Bookie, I checked all those boxes. I was there to prove I would do what was asked of me and do it in a way that I’ve been programmed to do for a very long time. It was really refreshing to reactivate those muscle groups. And again, it was, right back where we were. The shorthand between Chuck and I. We were right back to having a shorthand that was there once.
He doesn’t give a lot of notes. He lets a performer do what he’s doing because that is the reason he got the job. He honors that and he’ll come in with one very specific thing. And, he’s always right. It’s kind of annoying. He’s always right. And you do that thing, you’re like, of course. Okay, well that makes sense, how did I miss that? But you can’t think of everything all the time, right? I think he was experiencing the same thing. I was just us feeling the energy again of how it was, before it wasn’t. So that was exciting. That was exciting.
But I did something, I think I need to talk about it because nobody else does these days. So leave it to this guy.
DEADLINE: Have at it.
SHEEN: So I saw the show on a giant screen on the Warner lot with a cast and crew. And, much as I felt at the table read, when you come in on page 38, you’ve got a long time to stay nervous. So when you’re watching it, you had just as much time to stay nervous. I thought I did pretty good. I thought the scene was really good. I thought the show was terrific. All the other actors were spot on, and I think it was so big.
DEADLINE: What?
SHEEN: I’m focused, laser-focused … on a physical trait of mine. And I’m like, I need to fix that. It was my neck.
DEADLINE: Your neck?
SHEEN: Yeah. I’m looking at it and I look like when a really heavy person loses all the weight and their neck is still kind of a … turkey gobbler. It’s a saggy, flappy thing. I’m looking at that going, holy f*cking sh*t. It looks like that. This is Monday night.
DEADLINE: What did you do?
SHEEN: I could have stayed upset about it or I could get right into solution. So I see this on Monday night, and Tuesday morning, I’m on the phone with a doctor scheduling this thing.
DEADLINE: You’re having it fixed?
SHEEN: It was either that or go shopping for turtlenecks. I’m doing it in two weeks. In two weeks. But the next morning I was like, I didn’t want to see that again. And people shouldn’t have to look at that. It’s the disadvantage of not being on camera for 10 years. I see myself in the mirror every day and I’m like, alright, things have held together. This is the dialogue we have with ourselves in the morning. Yeah, this’ll have to do. But I saw that and I was like, wow, the last decade, not so friendly. So…
DEADLINE: If we were on Two And a Half Men, in the words of your mother, you’d be able to say, of course my new neck looks great…
SHEEN: It’s a Schenkman. Exactly. And if people are like, well yeah, I said I was going to do it, and I did.
DEADLINE: Can it be vanity if you are trying to remove something that might distract viewers?
SHEEN: And I’m not implanting anything. I am smoothing some sh*t out. Yeah. It really bothered me.
DEADLINE: Something that really bothers me. I’m like a huge pro football fan, I watch SportsCenter every day, but now with FanDuel and other legal betting sites, every ad is sports betting, and even the hosts and players are touting bets. Bookie is about sports betting. This something you are big into? I never bet and I’m not sure there’s a question here, but it seems this can’t end well.
(L-R) Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre
John Johnson/Max
SHEEN: No. I don’t bet, but I lived in that world. I was 2, 5, 7. Mr. Green. When [Sebastian Maniscalco] is taking those calls and they got the number and the code name, that was me. I retired in 2009. When [Manny] Pacquiao beat [Oscar] De La Hoya, I went out on a win.
DEADLINE: Why did you stop?
SHEEN: I got to a place where I felt nothing on the wins. So I had one of those moments where I sat down with myself and I said, okay, unless my own kids are the wager, if it has to be that for me to feel it again, I think we’ve reached the end of the internet. And no, I didn’t go through GA. I’m not a recovering degenerate gambler. I am a retired degenerate gambler. I got beaten into retirement, so I can’t help but pay attention to what you said. Everybody knows the lines of everything before it happens. It blows my mind to this day; there’s a couple minutes left, and you’re sitting on the number, and a lot of people are. What I do have an issue with is when the camera follows most field goal attempts from that angle, the backdrop is usually a giant advertisement for a gambling site. FanDuel, Caesars. It’s everywhere in the stadium. As you say, you can’t avoid it.
But the players, if they’re caught doing it, are penalized severely. It’s the greatest external revenue source for the NFL, maybe ever, outside of TV rights. But no, no, no, no, the players mustn’t bet. We support it to a point, to there’s a line. I just find that to be a little hypocritical.
DEADLINE: What I always think is that the reason why they can spend so much money on advertising is not because of the people who win, but all of them that lose. And what is this going to look like in five years? Degenerate gamblers are not going to have their legs broken like they did back in the days of illegal bookmakers who thrived like the ones in Bookie. But there will be a lot of incidents like the first scene, where we see a perpetual loser played by Ray Romano get thrown out of his house that’s about to be foreclosed. As he waves bye to his heartbroken kids in the window and throws his luggage in the car trunk, he pauses to call in a bet on a game.
SHEEN: First episode. Exactly. I think a lot of the reason why it was rejected in California on the ballot, and people said, I’m not having it, even if it would’ve subsidized a lot of programs that are hurting, they were more worried about all the kids that were going to get addicted. I don’t know. I know how bad it can go, but I also know people who are fine, celebrating a $100 parlay. I think there’s more of them than me.
DEADLINE: Did you get too far in?
SHEEN: Yeah. I approached gambling like I approached drugs. It was the same thing. It was the same energy. It was the same vibe. Calling the bookie was like calling a dealer, waiting on the game was like waiting for the delivery. And it was never about the result. I finally decoded it one day. It was all about that moment, right before the kickoff, the tip off of the puck dropping at the opening bell. The first pitch. It was that moment. And once any of those four things, five things happen, you’re in. There’s no chicken exit. It’s like, okay, it’s on. And that’s the feeling I got addicted to, everything that led up to it.
DEADLINE: You were making so much money on Two And a Half Men…
SHEEN: That much, it was a bad combo.
DEADLINE: Did it noticeably cut into your earnings?
SHEEN: Yeah, at one point it did.
DEADLINE: The avoidance of bookies is the source of some of the funniest scenes in Bookie. Ever had to avoid one of these guys when you lost big?
SHEEN: I had to borrow, once, and that crossed the line for me. The rule I always abided by was never make a bet you can’t pay if you lose. And I did.
DEADLINE: How big a bet?
SHEEN: It was a lot. It was a lot. Yeah. It was a couple weeks’ salary, but this was before the big deal. It was enough to really have to scramble.
DEADLINE: Can you say which team let you down?
SHEEN: What I can say is, I had a run that if you put it in a movie, nobody would believe it. It was that one point in the season when a few sports cross over, I think it’s October. No, I’m sure of it. And I lost 21 plays in a row. You know what the odds of doing that are?
DEADLINE: You mean you lost 21 bets in a row?
SHEEN: Individual bets, Yeah. In a row. You have to take the age of the universe squared, to come up with the odds for that happening.
DEADLINE: These betting sites warn you should not chase your losses…
SHEEN: Yeah, you get to nine, you get to 12, you’re like, alright. It’s like you’re flipping a coin. At some point it’s going to come out 50/50, right? And it didn’t, man. It didn’t. And it got to the point where the book would take my play and then put out the other side to all the sharps, to all the pros. They’re like, this guy’s on a run you can’t believe so here’s what he’s on. You take the other side, and I guarantee you’re going to win.
DEADLINE: So you got to the point we see in Bookie, where the guy doesn’t want to take the bet and says, if it’s Monday and you’re betting on tomorrow’s being Tuesday, don’t make that bet. There’s got to be fodder here for a Season 2 storyline, where you are losing so badly the bookies are laying odds against your bets.
SHEEN: Yeah, I was giving them the Monday sports page, on Sunday, when I made a play. I can laugh about it now. It wasn’t funny then though. No, I was talking to myself. People couldn’t believe it. I had friends saying, Hey, why don’t you take a day off? And I’m like, because that day I’ll go three and oh, and that’s the day I’ll get everything back. The gambler’s logic. So being in a show and then Chuck and Nick Bakay crafted this show and thought, who should some of the clients could be? And Chuck was like, what about Sheen? He knows a lot about this world. I witnessed it firsthand.
There was a producer on Two And a Half Men, and we were gambling partners. We’d go through the games all week and then we’d land on a few. And so, on show night, I’d do a scene. I couldn’t track the scores. So in the middle of getting notes, Lee [Aronsohn]’s there, Chuck’s there, some of the writers are there and we’re trying to fix the scene or make it better or whatever. I would glance up to see one guy, and he would find my field of vision and he would give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down, depending on how our bet was doing. And if the game had ended, he might do this [mimics dragging a razor across the throat]. So when I got the thumbs down, the neck drag, I had to fight through feigning excitement to keep doing the show that night. It is karmic and ironic I wind up in a show about that, having lived in that world pretty deeply, and then coming out the other side.
DEADLINE: As a fan of your work and especially on Two And a Half Men, I gotta say, I missed that guy.
SHEEN: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. For a while, I missed that guy too.
Charlie Sheen’s mornings look different these days. The actor told People in a new interview that next month marks six years since he quit drinking alcohol.
In 2017 and prior, he said, “I loved drinking in the morning. Loved some scotch in the coffee.” Now? “I wake up early, around 4:30 or 5 a.m., get an early jump on the news, work out, answer emails.”
Sheen disclosed in 2015 that he has HIV, which he was diagnosed with in 2011. He publicly struggled with addiction to various substances on and off for decades, and was dismissed from his long run on the sitcom Two and a Half Men as a result of his behavior. In a memorable instance amid a drug relapse, he claimed to be fueled by “tiger blood” and coined his #winning hashtag. In a 2021 interview, a decade after the fact, he told Yahoo! Entertainment he regretted the period immensely.
“People have [said to] me, ‘Hey, man, that was so cool, that was so fun to watch. That was so cool to be a part of and support and all that energy and, you know, we stuck it to the man,’” he said. “My thought behind that is, ‘Oh, yeah, great. I’m so glad that I traded early retirement for a fucking hashtag.’”
He said when he decided to stop drinking, he’d already quit using drugs, but it was one of those bygone booze-infused mornings that prompted Sheen to quit drinking, cold-turkey, six years ago.
“One morning I’d forgotten my daughter had an appointment I’d promised to drive her to, and I’d already had a couple of pops that day,” he said. (He shares daughters Sami, 19, and Lola, 18, with ex-wife Denise Richards.) “So had to call my friend Tony to take us. We got her there on time, but it broke my heart because she was in the backseat and I could just tell she was thinking, ‘Why isn’t dad driving?’ So I got home and sat with that for the rest of the day. And the next morning I just stopped.”
What started as one month “just to see,” in Sheen’s words, has now grown to over a half-decade of healthier habits and abstaining from alcohol.
“I’m like, all right, I’m going to go another month. And then it got traction. I had momentum,” he said. “There was just instant evidence that this was the side I needed to be on. I couldn’t be in denial about it anymore.”
Now, after his early morning start, he helps his 14-year-old twin sons Max and Bob get ready for their own day. “It’s all about single dad stuff,” he said. (The twins’ mother is Sheen’s ex-wife Brooke Mueller.)
After that broken promise to his daughter prompted a lifestyle overhaul, Sheen said he’s happy with who he is now.
“I’m proud of the choices that I’ve made and the changes I’ve made to live a life today that will never look like that mess,” he said of his past. “That was some alien version of myself.”
Representatives for Charlie Sheen did not immediately return requests for comment.
