Charlie Sheen is ready to open up like never before with the new documentary aka Charlie. The two-part doc will premiere on Netflix on Sept. 10.
Directed by Andrew Renzi, the film appears to be a pretty raw and candid look at Sheen’s life, from the career highs to his multiple rock bottom moments. Joining Sheen to tell his story are numerous figures from his life, including friend Sean Penn, ex-wives Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller, and Two and a Half Men co-star Jon Cryer. There are some unlikely figures who are also previewed as talking heads, like Sheen’s drug dealer as well as “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss, who says Sheen’s testimony against her is what sent her to jail.
“He did not want to make a documentary,” Renzi told Tudum, Netflix’s editorial arm. “[Sheen] was like, ‘Why step into this arena in this way?’ I had seven to eight months of relationship building with him before we even sat down to shoot the film. That was really important to me.”
Sheen, born to actors Martin Sheen and Janet Templeton, rose to prominence in the Eighties with films like Wall Street and The Three Musketeers. By the aughts, he would become the highest paid actor on TV with his starring role in the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men. Over the course of his career, Sheen struggled publicly with addiction and legal issues, notoriously bottoming out during his run on Two and a Half Men so badly that he was fired from the show. In 2015, he publicly disclosed that he was HIV positive, which spurred “the Charlie Sheen effect”: a notable increase in people getting tested and doing research on the symptoms of the disease. Sheen is now seven years sober.
From Rolling Stone US
