Charlie Sheen used to be one of the most successful actors on the planet, raking in millions for his roles in sitcoms and films. Starting out in the 1980s, the New York-born actor had decades of success and was even honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – but it all came crashing down in 2011 when his mental health and drug issues spiralled out of control.
At the peak of his career, Charlie, now 59, got a very cushty job as the leading man in the CBS show Two and a Half Men, for which he was eventually paid a whopping £1.3million per episode. But suddenly, everything fell apart and he was fired from the show and blacklisted from the rest of Hollywood.
After taking a break from the show to go to rehab, Charlie demanded a 50 percent pay rise and branded boss Chuck Lorre “a stupid, stupid little man and a p**sy punk that I’d never want to be like.” Needless to say, the move got Charlie sacked – but it did nothing to slow him down as he admitted to taking more drugs “than anyone could survive” in the aftermath of the axing.
After his sacking and a failed stint in sitcom Anger Management, work soon dried up for Charlie, with one studio executive claiming the star had become ‘uninsurable’. Then in 2015, the cause of Charlie’s behaviour became clear when the he revealed he’d secretly been diagnosed with HIV four years earlier. Having squandered ‘millions’ to keep blackmailers quiet, the father-of-five admitted he used drugs and booze to cope with diagnosis.
“It was the only tool I had at the time, so I believed that would quell a lot of that angst. A lot of that fear. And it only made it worse,” he said. “It was to suffocate the anxiety and what my life was going to become with this condition and getting so numb I didn’t think about it.”
So what is Charlie up to these days? Despite the fallout of his career and major tension in his family, he found love again in 2017 with model Julia Stambler, 32 – who also happened to be the nanny for his twin boys Max and Bob. According to TMZ, Julia told a friend she was ‘not scared’ of Charlie’s diagnosis and that they were taking anti-viral medication and using protection as part of an active sex life.
Charlie also shares daughter Cassandra, 40, with his high school girlfriend, daughters Sami, 21, and Lola, 19, with Denise Richards and 17-year-old twin boys Max and Bob with Brooke Mueller, from whom he split in 2010 a year after being charged with misdemeanour assault against her.
But while his romantic life was on the up, his fiscal life had taken a nose dive and Charlie was threatened with losing his Beverly Hills mansion over a reported unpaid £60,000 mortgage bill. Desperate to shift the luxe property, Charlie slashed £3.4million off the original asking price, accepting an offer of £6.4million on the seven-bedroom home earlier this year.
He also went to court in 2018 to seek a reduction in his child support payments to ex-wives Brooke and Denise Richards, explaining that he was in a ‘dire financial crisis’. In court documents obtained by The Blast, he said he had “been unable to find steady work, and [has] been blacklisted from many aspects of the entertainment industry”.
In 2020, he started selling personalised greetings for birthdays, anniversaries and other celebrations through the Cameo website at a bargain price of £332. However, in terms of his health, life has never been better. After years of battling addiction, Charlie finally got sober in 2017 after being unable to drive his daughter to an appointment because he’d been drinking.
“It just hit me that I knew it was time to make a change – and you know, it didn’t require some crazy rehab stint or a shootout with the cops. It didn’t require anything super-dramatic and crazy and front-page news,” he said. “To this day, I am not sure how I created such chaos and wound up in that headspace. It’s as though there was some alien or demonic possession going on.”
As for what the future holds, for Charlie, his health is what matters the most. “I try not to think too far down the line, you know?” he told US Weekly. “I made some changes to give myself a shot to do some cool things professionally. And I’m proud of finally being consistent. And reliable. And noble.” He said his HIV viral load is now ‘undetectable’.
While focusing on his health, Charlie’s life is still full of ups and downs. He hit headlines when he shared his true feelings about his daughter Sami making adult content on OnlyFans, and shocked fans in 2023 when it emerged that his neighbour had strangled him after a longstanding feud. However, he also seems to be getting back on the acting horse again, reuniting with former boss Chuck Lorre for a recurring guest role in the comedy series Bookies – suggesting that the years of bad blood might have come to an end.
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