In his new memoir and Netflix documentary, actor Charlie Sheen opens up about his tumultuous life as one of Hollywood’s most notorious figures.
The Book of Sheen, released on 9 September, and aka Charlie Sheen, released on 10 September, documents the 60-year-old’s various drug and sex scandals, as well as his time as one of the industry’s highest-paid actors.
Born into Hollywood royalty, Sheen and his brother Emilio Estevez had an unconventional childhood, growing up on movie sets alongside stars like Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, and O.J. Simpson.
Sheen’s issues with alcohol and drugs were present from an early age but morphed into a dangerous addiction when he turned his talents to acting.
His career has been the topic of tabloid speculation for decades, but arguably peaked during his infamous dismissal from the Emmy award-winning sitcom Two and a Half Men in 2011.
Now sober, Sheen reflects on his life and troubles in this honest book and documentary.
Sheen almost died when he was born
The book begins with Sheen revealing that he nearly died on the day he was born after his umbilical cord became wrapped around his neck.
Sheen explains that the doctor who saved his life was named Irwin Shaybone. In his honour, the future actor’s parents, Martin and Janet Sheen, named the son after him: Carlos Irwin Estévez.
Losing his virginity to a sex worker in Las Vegas
Sheen writes openly about his sex life, claiming that he lost his virginity to a sex worker named Candy in Las Vegas while he was still in high school.
He says that he “borrowed” his father’s credit card, who was asleep in the next hotel room, to pay for the woman’s services. Sheen added that when she saw the name on the card, she asked if he could wake his father for an autograph, which he told her would be “impossible”.
Why he changed his name from Estévez
Sheen had just started working with Glennis Liberty as his manager when he made the decision to use the surname his father adopted for acting.
“I’d sat with Pop the week earlier and got his blessing for the name swap. It was a much smoother father-son, Estevez-to-Sheen morph than the one Dad had suffered with his old man. I told him how important it was to honor him by carrying the name forward,” Sheen writes.
His younger brother, Emilio, was already acting and decided to use his birth name, Estévez, so Sheen wanted to honour both of his father’s names when he began his career.
“What I didn’t share with Pop: Using Sheen allowed me to slam the door on the recent academic and athletic failures I felt I was connected to with Estevez,” Sheen writes. “I wasn’t ashamed of the name, but if this was gonna be a fresh start across new horizons, I wanted to sound different when spoken of.”
Crack cocaine rewired his ‘frontal cortex’
The actor’s problems with drug addiction are well-documented and were a prevalent source of tabloid headlines for years. Sheen speaks openly in the book about his tribulations with substance abuse, including first smoking marijuana when he was just 11 and being arrested aged 15 after police discovered a bong in his car.
Sheen first tried cocaine while filming the Vietnam war drama Platoon in the Philippines, which he describes became a “hair-on-fire obsession”.
He would later become addicted to crack, having first taken the drug in 1992 with a friend called Sandy, which he says took him to “another galaxy”.
People will claim their greatest feelings in life as “my child’s first steps” or “saving that kid from a fire,” Sheen writes. “To quote Matt Hooper from Jaws: ‘I got that beat.’ Sandy and that drug rewired my frontal cortex into light-speed oneness times two.”
Piloted a plane when he was drunk
The documentary opens with a startling anecdote from Sheen about a plane ride with his first wife, Donna Peele. The pair were on honeymoon in 1995 and were invited into a cockpit for photos with the crew.
Sheen was allowed to sit in the pilot’s seat and rested his hands on the controls. Sheen then remembers the autopilot switch being briefly turned off by the captain, allowing him to fly the plane full of people. The actor says he felt “untouchable” in that moment.
Drug habit started to become obvious in films
In the documentary Sheen admits that he began to take on parts just to fund his drug habit which directly began to impact some of his performances. While filiming the 1997 buddy comedy Money Talks with Chris Tucker, Sheen says he suffered an “18 hour nosebleed” which he didn’t seek madical assistance for. During filming blood dripped on to Sheen’s shirt, who then asked director Brett Ratner to make that shot “go away forever”.
On another movie, 1998’s Free Money, Sheen admits that his habit had become so bad that he couldn’t keep his eyes open. Director Yves Simoneau spotted that Sheen was falling asleep on camera and called him out. To remedy this, Sheen bizarrely forced an ice cube up his anus just to wake him up and finish the scene.
First date with Denise Richards was ‘dorky’
Sheen began dating Denise Richards in 2001 after meeting her on the set of “unfunny indie” comedy Good Advice.
He says their relationship was “professional” during filming, but they hit it off when they were reunited on sitcom Spin City.
At the time, Sheen was sober and the future couple’s first date was spent watching a baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the Houston Astros on October 4, 2001.
Sheen said he knew his “dorky date plan” paid off when Richards yelled louder than he did after a home run.
The couple, who married in 2002 and had two children together, divorced in 2005.
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Bonded with Matthew Perry over their shared addiction issues
Sheen got to know Matthew Perry when attending a drug addiction group that the late Friends actor hosted.
Speaking of the star, Sheen writes: “Matt and I shared a deeper truth we saw in each other—we were both, as Bobby Dee Jay used to say, ‘veterans of the unspeakable.’ (Those who’ve been through it recognise fellow graduates at a glance.)
“I was fascinated by Matt’s ability to turn every frown upside down. I’ve never met anyone who more masterfully used humor as a deflector-shield to keep you just enough over there. I dug every minute we spent together—and over there with Matthew was much better than most people’s front and center.”
Depressed by HIV diagnosis
Sheen was diagnosed with HIV in 2011 after suffering from “nonstop cluster headaches” and “delirious nightsweats”. He was shocked to discover that his condition was actually HIV, but found some “relief knowing an entire discipline of high-tech medicine was at my disposal to drive that bastard into submission.”
He went public with his condition in 2015, which he now manages with several antiretroviral drugs. He added that he thinks about his illness “once a day for 20 seconds because I have to, that’s the time it takes to eat the poison that tames the evil stowaway”.
Blamed testosterone cream for ‘Two and a Half Men’ breakdown
Sheen was dismissed from the hit sitcom Two and a Half Men in 2011 for what was described as “dangerously self-destructive conduct”.
However, Sheen claims that it wasn’t alcohol or drugs that were causing his issues on set, as he was cold turkey at the time.
“What I chose not to quit was the testosterone cream that I was slathering on in mind-altering gobs like a f***ing Pond’s commercial,” he writes. “After all, it was ‘legal.’ I’d been using it to get my body back into shape, not knowing that at the same time I was being shape-shifted.”
He adds: “That drug is known to metabolize into the identical psych profile an anabolic steroid will produce. Anyone who bore witness to the raging demon I melded with will hopefully glean some clarity for what my state of mind was up against.”
Sheen says that he’s “not making excuses” for his actions but sharing it as a “detail that may have been confused with a laundry list of other potential suspects”.
Drug dealer confirms that Sheen take ‘seven-gram rocks’
Sheen’s former drug dealer, Marco, is featured in the documentary and comments on an infamous line from the actor’s controversial ABC interview in 2011. During the conversation where Sheen was grilled about his excessive drug use, he claimed that he was “banging seven-gram rocks” of crack cocaine.
Although that is considered to be an incredible amount of cocaine, Marco confirms that he’d personally seen Sheen take seven-gram rocks.
Marco later says that Sheen’s drug counsellor asked him to make the cocaine less potent, which he did. “He actually just got tired of smoking blunt crack, which he thought was good crack. He just stopped. He got tired of doing it.”
Got sober after feeling he was ‘failing his children’
Sheen had many stints in rehab between the early 1990s and 2010s and was even told to get clean by celebrity friends like Clint Eastwood and Guns ‘n’ Roses guitarist Slash.
However, despite the many public embarrassments his addictions caused him, it was actually a 2017 car ride with his daughter Sami that finally inspired him to change his life for good.
A drunk Sheen had asked a friend to drive him and Sami to an appointment. “There was only one thing that felt worse than betraying myself, and that was failing my children,” he writes. “In that car, on that day, with my best friend and a child I adore, I joined Sam in those mirrors and saw a guy who was desperate to finally come home for real,” Sheen writes.
On the day of his eldest daughter Cassandra’s birthday, 12 December, Sheen says he quit drinking for good and has spent the eight years since focused on his family.
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