Charlie Sheen has opened up about his sexual encounters with men.
“I flipped the menu over,” the 60-year-old star said in upcoming Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen, claiming he wanted to try something new after having sex with women, according to People. “I’m not going to run from my past, or let it own me.”
Sheen is asked in the documentary how it feels to be talking publicly about his same-sex encounters for the first time after years of trying to hide them.
“Liberating. It’s f---ing liberating ... [to] just talk about stuff,” he replied. “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.”
The former Two and a Half Men star also spoke about his experiences with men during an appearance on Good Morning America, which he said first began while he was smoking crack.
“That’s what started it,” he said. “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 contracted HIV as a result of his drug-fueled exploits, which he publicly revealed on the Today show in 2015. The star said he was pressured to reveal his secret to the world after being blackmailed by sexual partners, who would take pictures of his medication and threaten to expose his secret unless he paid them “millions” in hush money.
Sheen stated with certainty that “I know for a fact that I never passed it on.”
In addition to the Netflix documentary, Sheen is also releasing his memoir, The Book of Sheen, on September 9, a day before the doc is broadcast.
When asked if he has any regrets, the actor says he has just one: his 20-city speaking tour in 2011, which he embarked on after an infamous 20/20 interview in which he claimed he had “tiger blood,” “Adonis DNA,” and was a “warlock.”
“The only thing I’m addicted to right now is winning,” he said in the interview.
“That tour didn’t have to happen,” Sheen told People. “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.”
Nowadays, Sheen says his love life is mostly uneventful, as he has retreated from the spotlight to spend time with his children following a pair of high-profile divorces with exes Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller.
“My romantic life is as uneventful as it possibly could be, and it’s been that way for a long time,” Sheen admits. “But I am open to love again. Probably not marriage, though!”
