Golden Globe-winning actor Charlie Sheen has revealed for the first time that he has had sexual encounters with men, calling the disclosure “f***ing liberating.”
The Two and a Half Men star, now 60, opens up in his upcoming memoir The Book of Sheen and Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen, both releasing this month.
Speaking to PEOPLE, Sheen explained that the experiences began while he was using crack cocaine.
“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?’ So what? Some of it was weird. A lot of it was f***ing fun, and life goes on.”
Sheen, who has lived largely out of the spotlight since achieving sobriety in 2017, said sharing the truth about his past felt freeing.
“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. I’m not going to run from my past or let it own me.”
In an interview with Good Morning America host Michael Strahan, Sheen added that he wanted “to be free” of secrets.
HIV diagnosis and extortion
In his memoir, Sheen also revisits his HIV diagnosis in 2011, which he kept private for four years. He revealed publicly in 2015 that he was HIV positive.
He explained that secrecy was driven by extortion attempts:
“Some of the people I had slept with would take photos of my medication, and threaten to expose me if I didn’t pay them off. 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.’”
Looking to the future
These days, Sheen describes his romantic life as “as uneventful as it possibly could be,” but says he is “open to love again.”
Sheen was one of the most popular television stars of the 2000s, earning Golden Globe, Emmy and SAG nominations for his role as Charlie Harper in CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men. His career collapsed in 2011 after he was fired from the show due to substance abuse struggles.
He later made headlines for controversial statements on vaccines and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as his high-profile divorce from actress Denise Richards.
The Book of Sheen will be released on 9 September, followed by aka Charlie Sheen on Netflix this September.
