Actor Charlie Sheen told Newsmax on Friday that his new book felt more freeing once it hit shelves than while he was writing it and that talking about the past has been more therapeutic than committing it to paper.
"The Book of Sheen: A Memoir," published Sept. 9, chronicles the highs and lows of his turbulent acting career and sits at No. 4 on The New York Times nonfiction bestsellers list.
"It's become more therapeutic now that it's out than it was in the process of actually creating it," Sheen told "Rob Schmitt Tonight," adding that choosing to put "all of those stories to the page" was a gamble he was willing to take.
"One of the things I was hoping to achieve with it was ... take the past and just slide it behind me and tell people, 'Look, if you're curious about anything, you can read it, you can watch it, you can listen to it' ... and just move forward," he said.
Sheen rose to fame from such films as "Platoon" and "Wall Street" and then as the breakout star of "Two and a Half Men." The rapid arc of fame left him unprepared for the fallout that followed, he said, and the turmoil during and after his "Two and a Half Men" years included "darkest times" that forced him to rethink his priorities.
He began "paying attention to my body" and to relationships that were "starting to unravel," he said, and he leaned on willpower and the prospect of losing the people he cared about to find a way out.
The interview turned personal for host Rob Schmitt, who asked how he ended up in Sheen's book. Reading aloud a passage about "two awesome Robs," Sheen said the host's nightly sign-on — "Let's check it out" — had become a comfort during long nights.
"It's such a badass way to kick off your show every night," he said.
"I knew I couldn't write this book feeling how I felt during the first Trump administration. And so I decided that I was going to go back to doing my own research — something I have relied on my entire life. When I'm curious about something, I do my own research."
"And I started looking at it like if I was on a jury, OK? And I left the courtroom every time the defense presented a new witness or cross-examined someone or presented new evidence. And I left the jury every time and came back, and then thought I still had a right to weigh in on a verdict," Sheen continued.
"So I couldn't, because I wouldn't have the full story of that case. I knew it was time to change the channel. And I changed the channel, and I found you guys. And the nights I did go to bed ... I went to bed in a much better mood, feeling a lot better about the state of things. That's how that wound up in there."
On acting, Sheen sounded cautiously optimistic. He said he's "reading material now" and hasn't committed to a next job but called some scripts "the best material I've seen in 20 years."
He added that the projects that turned out best were often the ones that scared him at first — "a gamble worth taking."
Sheen said he has a simple ethos for his return: "Just being responsible in the workplace. ... You shake somebody's hand and say, 'Yes, I agree to do this and to do it well and just got to honor that.'"
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