Charlie Sheen speaks publicly for the first time about sleeping with men in his new memoir, The Book of Sheen, out September 9.
Sheen’s drug use peaked in the late 2000s and came to a head in early 2011, culminating in his highly publicized meltdown and dismissal from Two and a Half Men.
In an interview with Good Morning America that aired Friday, Sheen said he had sex with men during that period, but kept it secret due to being extorted.
“It did come with a tremendous amount of extortion,” Sheen told co-anchor 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.’”
“They had videoed things or whatever, or had stuff over me,” he continued.
Sheen, 60, said he felt like he was being “held hostage” by his sexual partners.
“I just need to be free of that... and then see how the world feels if people know that stuff,” he said of his decision to speak publicly. “Because I’ve written a story all these years about, ‘Oh jeez, if I ever reveal that, then this has to be how I’d be dealt with, how I’d be treated, how they’d feel.’”
Sheen publicly revealed he was HIV positive in 2015, saying he had been diagnosed four years earlier, in 2011.
In 2016, the actor admitted he didn’t tell some of his past sexual partners he had HIV because he was worried they would blackmail him.
“The only couple of times I didn't tell somebody was because the last 25 times I’d told somebody, they used it against me, and they used my medical condition for their own folly and financial gain,” Sheen told Piers Morgan for Mail Online.
“And the amount of despicable charlatans that I thought were allies, that then turned against me, they were coming out of the woodwork, it was crazy.”
Sheen maintained he had always had protected sex since his diagnosis and never infected anyone with HIV.
Sheen has five children from three different relationships: Cassandra Jade Estevez, born in 1984 to his high school girlfriend Paula Profit; Sami Sheen, born in 2004, and Lola Rose Sheen, born in 2005, both with his second wife Denise Richards; and twin sons Bob and Max Sheen, born in 2009, with his third wife Brooke Mueller.
He told GMA that his relationships with his children have improved since he got sober in 2017.
However, his relationship with his 21-year-old daughter Sami remains fractious. She previously said, “It’s totally fine” that her father doesn’t condone her joining OnlyFans.
“I feel like as long as everybody’s still in the game, there’s always a shot for a better tomorrow, you know,” Sheen said. “I don’t really know what I did, that’s the problem. I don’t know what I'm supposed to yet apologize for. But I have absolute faith that it's not a forever thing, and her and I will work it out. You know, we have a history that’s too valuable to let, you know, some moment destroy all of that.”
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