American actor Charlie Sheen is stepping into a different kind of spotlight this September with two projects that dig deep into his past — his memoir The Book of Sheen and a Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen, both scheduled to release next week .
“It’s not about me setting the record straight or righting all the wrongs of my past,” he said in an interview with People magazine. “It’s just me, finally telling the stories in the way they actually happened. The stories I can remember, anyway,” he added jokingly.
In the documentary, Charlie speaks candidly for the first time about his sexual encounters with men. Asked how it feels to talk openly after hiding it for years, he responded, “Liberating. It’s f***ing liberating… [to] just talk about stuff. It’s like a train didn’t come through the side of the restaurant. A f***ing piano didn’t fall out of the sky. No one ran into the room and shot me.”
He recalled that his experiences with men began when he was using crack. “That’s what started it. That’s where it was born, or sparked. And in whatever chunks of time that I was off the pipe, trying to navigate that, trying to come to terms with it — ‘Where did that come from? Why did that happen?’ — and then just finally being like, ‘So what? Some of it was weird. A lot of it was f***ing fun, and life goes on’,” Charlie recalled.
Charlie, in the documentary also discusses living with HIV. He says after contracting the virus, people who stayed overnight at his home would take photos of his medication and use it to blackmail him. At first he paid them, but later he chose to speak out publicly in 2015 on the Today show. “I do know for a fact that I never passed it on,” he said.
Looking back, Charlie expresses regret about his chaotic 2011 “tiger blood” tour. “That tour didn’t have to happen. I’m not a victim, but somebody should have tapped out for me and said, ‘This is a bad idea.’ I’ve combed through all the mental health manuals, and I’ve never found ‘exploitation’ as a good treatment protocol,” Charlie said.
He is also trying to rebuild bridges, including with his former Two and a Half Men costar Jon Cryer, who spoke compassionately about him in the documentary. Charlie says he sent Jon a message thanking him but never heard back. “I’m thinking I wrote to the wrong number. It’s not like Jon to not respond. He’s super responsible like that. So if you’re reading this, Jon, DM me your new number!,” he said.
After years of public battles with addiction, HIV disclosure, and a turbulent exit from Two and a Half Men, Charlie also said sobriety and reflection have shifted his outlook. “It takes two to tango,” he admitted, adding that he doesn’t want to paint himself as a victim. What he does want now is to tell his story on his own terms — unfiltered, unapologetic, and in his own words.
