Charlie Sheen

• Born: September 3, 1965
• Place of Birth: New York, New York

AMERICAN ACTOR

Well-known for tabloid scandals involving substance abuse and failed relationships, Charlie Sheen nevertheless has proved himself a more than capable actor in serious dramatic films and a gifted comedian, especially in his television roles.

Early Life

Charlie Sheen was born Carlos Irwin Estevez on September 3, 1965, in New York. He is the son of highly respected American film and stage actor Martin Sheen and artist Janet Templeton. When his father, the Spanish American Ramon Estevez, decided to become an actor, he chose the stage name “Sheen” in honor of the popular American cleric Bishop Fulton Sheen. Later, Charlie elected to Anglicize his name as well.

At birth, Sheen was a sickly child, and it was feared that he would not survive. A Dr. Irwin was integral in saving the boy, and so the grateful parents gave him the middle name “Irwin” in the medic’s honor.

Sheen attended high school in Santa Monica, California, where he was a gifted baseball player and a budding actor and director, making and appearing in several amateur films with his brother Emilio Estevez and other schoolmates, including Rob Lowe. However, he was a lackluster and inattentive student and was expelled in his senior year. He immediately began to pursue an acting career, appearing in several bit parts before landing his first important part in a major film, playing a soldier in Vietnam in Oliver Stone’s 1986 hit film Platoon, based in part on Stone’s own experiences. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year and made Sheen a star. He quickly lined up more roles in important films, including Stone’s Wall Street (1987), which again was popular with the public and critics. Sheen’s partnership with Stone ended unpleasantly, however, in 1989, when Stone refused to cast Sheen in the starring role in Born on the Fourth of July.

Life’s Work

Sheen rebounded from the professional break with Stone by appearing in a film by another major American director, John Sayles, about a subject dear to Sheen’s heart: baseball. The film was Eight Men Out (1988), a historical sports drama about the 1919 World Series scandal, when members of the Chicago White Sox accepted bribes to throw games. Sheen played one of the eight men involved, Oscar Felsch. Later that year and early the next, he starred in two other hit films: Young Guns (1988), a Western drawing on legends of Billy the Kid, and Major League (1989), a baseball comedy.

After the success of Major League, Sheen starred in action films The Rookie and Navy SEALS (both 1990) and then in a pair of satires of such films, the popular Hot Shots! (1991) and Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993). This duo of spoofs revealed Sheen’s flair for flippant humor, a talent that became the focus of his career from the mid-1990s onward. The rest of the 1990s and the 2000s saw Sheen experiment with diverse genres such as science fiction and documentaries and taking on numerous cameo roles, often as himself, most notably in Being John Malkovich (1999). He wrote the script for the television film No Code of Conduct (1998), in which he also starred and appeared in the spoofs Scary Movie 3 (2003) and Scary Movie 4 (2006).

When Michael J. Fox left his CBS situation comedy Spin City in 2000 because of Parkinson’s disease, the producers tapped Sheen to replace him as a wry assistant to a big-city mayor. He appeared in the series for two years, winning a Golden Globe for the role. The year after the series ended, Sheen began a long run in another CBS sitcom, Two and a Half Men, in which he played a shallow, womanizing playboy whose lifestyle is challenged when his brother and nephew move in with him. His cynical exchanges with Jon Cryer as his brother made the show a top-ten hit in a decade in which sitcoms tended not to fare well in the ratings. Sheen’s portrayal of Charlie Harper earned him two Golden Globe nominations and three Emmy nominations.

Off-screen, Sheen has found himself at the center of many scandals. One girlfriend, actor Kelly Preston, broke up with him after he accidentally shot her. In the 1990s, he was revealed to be a patron of “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss. His first marriage to model Donna Peele lasted barely one year; his second, to actor Denise Richards, lasted from 2002 to 2006. His third, to real-estate investor Brooke Mueller from 2008 to 2010, ended in part because of a violent episode on Christmas Day in 2009, during which Sheen was arrested for allegedly threatening Mueller with a knife. He later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge. Another scandal erupted in October 2010, when Sheen, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, vandalized a New York hotel room that he shared with former pornography star Capri Anderson.

In January 2011, Sheen was hospitalized with abdominal pains and began a drug rehabilitation program in his home. Production of Two and a Half Men was suspended, and after Sheen made comments in an interview critical of series creator Chuck Lorre, he was fired from the show. Over the following months, Sheen attracted constant publicity for his erratic behavior and outrageous comments to the media and on social-networking site Twitter. He used his notoriety to launch a one-man stage show, My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option, and toured major cities throughout the United States, receiving mixed reviews.

Still, Sheen was able to continue appearing on television, this time as part of the cast of the FX sitcom Anger Management, which ran for two seasons between 2012 and 2014 before it was canceled by the network. While shooting the series, he also took on a role in the action-thriller Machete Kills (2013). After he announced in 2015 that he had received a positive HIV diagnosis around 2011, he did not take part in any film productions until 2017, when he appeared alongside Leah Remini in Mad Families, an original comedy produced by the streaming service Crackle. That year also saw him take on a dramatic role for the first time in several years as one of the stars of 9/11, which focuses on five people stuck in an elevator during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001; both films were largely panned. In 2018, Sheen appeared in a music video with rap artist, Lil Pump.

Sheen began starring in the Max comedy Bookie in 2023, a series co-created by Chuck Lorrie. Sheen plays a bookie who must adjust to the legalization of sports gambling. Sheen plays himself on the series.

Significance

Despite Sheen’s controversial public image, his record as an actor remains impressive: praiseworthy performances in celebrated films such as Platoon and Wall Street and a long and successful stint as a comedic actor on television. These facets of his career earned him accolades from the Latino community in the form of three nominations (including one win) for the American Latino Media Arts (ALMA) Awards.

Bibliography

"Charlie Sheen Fast Facts." CNN, 23 Aug. 2020, www.cnn.com/2013/09/11/showbiz/charlie-sheen-fast-facts. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Maerz, Melissa, and Scott Collins. “Charlie Sheen: ‘I’m Tired of Pretending Like I’m Not Special.” The Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2011.

Parish, James Robert. Hollywood Bad Boys: Loud, Fast, and Out of Control. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.

Schneider, Michael. "How the 'Two and a Half Men' Reunion Between Angus T. Jones and Charlie Sheen Happened on Bookie." Variety, 30 Nov. 2023, variety.com/2023/tv/news/angus-t-jones-charlie-sheen-two-and-a-half-men-reunion-bookie-1235814037/. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Shumacher, Lee, and David Riley. The Sheens: Martin, Charlie, and Emilio Estevez. New York: St. Martin’s, 1989.

Tresniowski, Alex, et al. “Charlie Sheen’s Troubled World.” People 73, no. 2 (January 18, 2010): 64-67.

Wallenstein, Andrew. “Charlie Sheen Stars in Lil Pump's 'Drug Addicts' Music Video.” Variety, 5 July 2018, variety.com/2018/music/news/lil-pump-charlie-sheen-video-drug-addicts-watch-1202866553/. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.