Charlie Sheen

Charlie Sheen was married three times. He married model Donna Peele in 1995, actress Denise Richards in 2002, and real estate investor Brooke Mueller in 2008. Each marriage ended in divorce, in 1996, 2006, and 2011, respectively.

He has five children. His daughters are Cassandra, Sam, and Lola, and his twin sons with Brooke Mueller are Bob and Max. Sheen is the son of actor Martin Sheen and Janet Templeton, and his siblings Emilio Estevez, Ramon Estevez, and Renée Estevez also work in entertainment.

Sheen began appearing on screen as a child and pursued acting professionally after leaving Santa Monica High School. His early film roles included Red Dawn and The Boys Next Door, followed by appearances in Lucas and Ferris Bueller's Day Off in 1986. He made amateur Super-8 films with his brother Emilio and classmates Rob Lowe and Sean Penn.

His breakthrough came with Oliver Stone's Vietnam War drama Platoon (1986), in which he played Private Chris Taylor. Sheen and the cast underwent a military-style boot camp before filming. He worked with Stone again in Wall Street (1987), playing Bud Fox opposite Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko.

Sheen continued with Young Guns, Eight Men Out, and Major League. His performance as pitcher Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn became one of his best-known film roles, which he reprised in Major League II. He later displayed his comic timing as Topper Harley in Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux.

In 2000, Sheen replaced Michael J. Fox as Charlie Crawford on the sitcom Spin City. The series ran through 2002, and Sheen won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series, Musical or Comedy for the role.

Sheen began starring as Charlie Harper on Two and a Half Men in 2003. The character was a careless advertising jingle writer whose lifestyle was disrupted by the arrival of his nephew. Sheen received four Primetime Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations for the role, which made him one of television's most prominent sitcom stars.

Production stopped in 2011 after Sheen entered rehabilitation and publicly criticized series creator Chuck Lorre. CBS and Warner Bros. terminated his contract, and Ashton Kutcher replaced him. Sheen returned to television in 2012 as Charlie Goodson in Anger Management, which ran for 100 episodes before ending in 2014.

Sheen was hospitalized in May 1998 after a cocaine overdose and stroke. He entered rehabilitation several times during that period. In December 2009, he was arrested in Colorado for assaulting Brooke Mueller and later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault. He received a sentence that included rehabilitation, probation, and anger-management treatment.

The end of Two and a Half Men was followed by a series of highly publicized interviews in which Sheen used phrases such as “tiger blood,” “Adonis DNA,” and “winning.” He also undertook the 2011 stage tour My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option.

In November 2015, Sheen publicly disclosed that he was HIV-positive and said he had received the diagnosis about four years earlier. His disclosure produced a substantial increase in searches for HIV testing and prevention information, as well as a rise in sales of at-home HIV test kits. This effect became known as the “Charlie Sheen effect.” He later said that he stopped using drugs before quitting alcohol in 2017.

After Anger Management, Sheen appeared in films including A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, Machete Kills, and 9/11. For Machete Kills, he was credited under his birth name, Carlos Estévez, reflecting the film's Hispanic theme. He also appeared in the television series Bookie in 2023 and 2024.

In 2025, Sheen published The Book of Sheen: A Memoir. He also participated in the two-part Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen, which examined his career, public controversies, and recovery.

Sheen has supported HIV-related causes for many years, including Aid For AIDS, which honored him with an AFA Angel Award in 2009. He also served as a celebrity judge for the organization's annual Best in Drag Show fundraiser.

In 2004, Sheen was a spokesperson for Lee National Denim Day, a breast-cancer fundraising campaign. During his 2011 tour, he donated one dollar from each ticket sold to the Red Cross Japanese earthquake relief fund, and in 2012 he announced a donation to the Cincinnati Reds' community fund.