Charlie Sheen is poised to make his acting comeback, after his personal and professional life took a setback in 2011 amid his messy public falling out with Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre. What followed for the next several years were bizarre public appearances in which the 58-year-old ranted about "winning" and "tiger blood," not to mention his erratic "Violent Torpedo of Truth" nationwide "comedy" tour.
Now, Sheen is about to celebrate six years of society, and his life mostly revolves around raising his 14-year-old twin boys Max and Bob, who he shares with his ex-wife Brooke Mueller. "I have a very consistent lifestyle now. It's all about single dad stuff," he recently told People in an exclusive interview.
"Now I wake up early, around 4:30 or 5 a.m., get an early jump on the news, work out, answer emails," he says about how he spends his mornings," the Major League star explained. "Then I get the kids up and help them with their morning routine—if you can call it a routine."
It's quite the change from when Sheen says he started his mornings by hitting the bottle. "I loved drinking in the morning," he recalled. "Loved some scotch in the coffee."
But back in 2017, Sheen came to the realization that his lifestyle needed to change when he found himself too intoxicated to drive one of his daughters from his marriage to his second wife Denise Richards, 19-year-old Sami and 18-year-old Lola, to an appointment.
"I had to call my friend Tony to take us," he continued. "We got her there on time, but it broke my heart because she was in the backseat and I could just tell she was thinking, 'Why isn't dad driving?' So I got home and sat with that for the rest of the day. And the next morning I just stopped."
A that point, Sheen had already given up drugs, but after that he quit drinking cold turkey without so much as setting foot in rehab.
"I think the first month I was like, I'm going to have give it a month, just see if I feel any better, and if my interactions with those that are closest to me improve," he said. "And they did. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to go another month. And then it got traction. I had momentum."
"There was just instant evidence that this was the side I needed to be on. I couldn't be in denial about it anymore," Sheen added.
Now that his boys are getting older and he's gotten his life in order, Sheen is hoping to return to acting and rehabilitate his once-pristine reputation. Already, he's evidently mended fences with Lorre, making an appearance on the showrunner's new Max series Bookie.
"For the longest time, I had the best work reputation," he recollected. "I was the first to arrive, last to leave, when in doubt, I would over prepare. I would just check every box. And then that went away. So I was really excited about being that guy again."
"I'm proud of the choices that I've made and the changes I've made to live a life today that will never look like that mess," he added. "That was some alien version of myself."