Charlie Sheen: "I Am In Fact HIV Positive"

Charlie Sheen in 2013.

Michael Buckner / Getty Images

Actor Charlie Sheen revealed that he is HIV positive on theToday show. He told Matt Lauer that he was diagnosed four years ago.

"I'm here to admit that I am in fact HIV positive," Sheen said Tuesday.

The Two and a Half Men actor said that he's not sure how he contracted the virus but that since his diagnosis he's "always led with condoms and honesty" when it came to his condition, according to a letter Sheen wrote to Lauer, Today reported.

"I have a responsibility now to better myself and help a lot of other people," Sheen said.

The 50-year-old also said that he has with "no exceptions" always disclosed his HIV status to his sexual partners.

Since his diagnosis, he's dealt with "shake-downs" from people threatening to leak his diagnosis to the media. He recalled one time when a prostitute took a photo of his anti-viral medication in his bathroom and threatened to sell that photo. He said that by coming forward he's hoping to put an end to that.

"I think I release myself from this prison today," Sheen said.

Rumors have been swirling around the media for weeks that a Hollywood star was HIV positive. In October, the National Enquirer published a report that said a "bad-boy Tinseltown star" had been hiding his HIV status. The story did not name 50-year-old Sheen, but left clues pointing toward him. The Enquirer's corporate sibling RadarOnline used the same veiling technique in its story on Nov. 2, which described the star as "world-famous" and "middle-aged," and "known for a playboy lifestyle filled with one-night stands and sex-for-hire partners." Last week, the U.K. tabloid The Sun advanced the story by writing that lawyers for the then-still-unnamed star were "preparing for a raft of potential legal claims from previous lovers."

The reports succeeded in launching heated speculation among blind-gossip item spectators not only about who the actor was — which was not hard to pinpoint — but whether he would come out to announce the news on his own. The gossip press' assertion that Sheen had disclosed his HIV status to a circle wide enough that the story had leaked out seemed to be true. Among the Sony emails uncovered after the hack in late 2014, for instance, Sony television executive Steve Mosko replied to a report about there being trouble on Sheen's FX show Anger Management by writing, "it's hard to to be a drug addict and be HIV positive and do 40 eps a year." That email exchange was from March 2014.

Sheen on Two and a Half Men.

CBS

In recent years, Sheen has been most famous for his drug-and-alcohol fueled breakdown that reached a crescendo in early 2011. The then-star of CBS' Two and a Half Men, was the highest paid actor on television. But after lashing out publicly at the show's creator, Chuck Lorre — in a radio interview, he called Lorre "Chaim Levine," and in a TMZ interview, he referred to him as a "stupid, stupid little man" whom he "violently hated" — CBS and Warner Bros., the show's producer, put Two and a Half Men on hiatus for the season, ostensibly so Sheen could go to rehab.

From there, Sheen devolved further, and his deterioration was both chronicled and propelled by the television media, which gave him a constant platform. On Today, Sheen demanded a raise from $2 million to $3 million an episode, and called himself a "warlock"; on Good Morning America, he said he could take excessive amounts of drugs because he had "tiger blood." Sheen surrounded himself by a rotating cast of porn stars, whom he called "goddesses," that he moved into his home. His erratic phrasings — "winning," "Adonis DNA," etc. — entered the zeitgeist, and drew praise from such commentators as Bret Easton Ellis.

Sheen on Good Morning America in 2011.

ABC News

Despite having achieved folk hero status in certain quarters, Sheen was fired from Two and a Half Men on March 7, 2011. In their letter to Sheen's lawyer, Martin D. Singer, the attorneys from Warner Bros. wrote, "Your client has been engaged in dangerously self- destructive conduct and appears to be very ill."

In the immediate aftermath of his meltdown, Sheen rode its wave. He went on a live concert tour, was the subject of a Comedy Central roast, and got another starring role in a comedy series, Anger Management on FX. Though Sheen did not blow that show up as he had Two and a Half Men, there were certainly problems on set: According to Deadline, Sheen fired Selma Blair, his co-star, in a text message in which he called her a "cunt." The following year, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Sheen began to miss work, a hallmark of his final days at Two and a Half Men. The show was canceled in 2014.

Sheen in Platoon.

MGM

For years before his public disintegration, Sheen had been in and out of legal trouble, often because of violent episodes with women. In 1990, when he was engaged to actor Kelly Preston, Sheen shot her, and she was hit with shrapnel — he said at the time it was an accident. In 1996, Sheen assaulted his girlfriend Brittany Ashland, a porn star, and pleaded no contest. Denise Richards, to whom Sheen was married from 2002 through 2006, told Oprah Winfrey that Sheen had "at times" been abusive to her, though she said he had never hit her. (In a sworn declaration during their divorce, Richards said otherwise, claiming — among many other allegations — that Sheen had shoved her onto the ground and said, "I hope you fucking die, bitch.") In December 2009, Sheen was arrested for assaulting his then-wife Brooke Mueller on Christmas, and threatening her with a knife — Sheen pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault eight months later. That fall, in 2010, Sheen trashed a room at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, terrifying his prostitute guest, who fled into the bathroom and locked herself in. Sheen was hospitalized. In the New York Post account, "He told police that he had been out drinking and doing cocaine earlier before ending up in his suite with the hooker, sources said." Sheen's publicist at the time claimed Sheen had had an allergic reaction to medication.

Sheen was born Carlos Irwin Estevez in 1965, the third of actor Martin Sheen and Janet Templeton Sheen's four children. His acting peers were the Brat Pack of the 1980s, of which his brother Emilio Estevez was a prominent member. But Sheen's career took a different path when he starred in two consecutive Oliver Stone-directed movies, Platoon in 1986 and Wall Street in 1987. After Sheen's movie career fell into bad comedy doldrums in the ‘90s, he turned to television, taking over Spin City from Michael J. Fox. When that series ended in 2002, Sheen created the role of Charlie Harper on Two and a Half Men and was nominated four times for Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series throughout his run on the sitcom, from 2003 to 2011.