Charlie Sheen is opening up about his past sexual encounters with men for the first time.
In his upcoming memoir, The Book of Sheen, and Netflix documentary, aka Charlie Sheen, the 60-year-old actor reveals he explored relationships with men after years of dating only women.
“I flipped the menu over,” Sheen said in the documentary, according to People. Calling the decision “liberating,” he added, “It’s f—ing liberating … [to] just talk about stuff. 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.”
The Two and a Half Men star told People that he began those encounters after smoking crack. “That’s what started it,” he said. “Some of it was weird. A lot of it was f—ing fun, and life goes on.”
On Good Morning America, Sheen explained why he kept it hidden. “There was another element to it that it did come with a tremendous amount of extortion,” he said. “At the time, I was just like, ‘All right, let’s just pay to keep it quiet. And just hope it just stays over there.””
He said the secrecy left him feeling “held hostage,” but added: “I just need to be free of that … and then see how the world feels if people know that stuff.”
Sheen, who revealed his HIV diagnosis in 2015, also revealed that he contracted the virus during his years of drug-fueled encounters and faced extortion over that as well.