Charlie Sheen: ‘I Had to Save My Own Life’

THE ACTOR OPENS UP ABOUT HIS WILD PAST, FINALLY EMBRACING SOBRIETY AND LOOKING FORWARD TO WHATEVER HIS 60S HOLD: ‘I’VE GOT A LOT TO LIVE FOR’

- GILLIAN TELLING, CLIFF WATTS

On Sept. 3 Charlie Sheen turned 60—a milestone he wasn’t sure he’d ever see. “I have more days behind me than in front of me,” he says after a People beach photo shoot in Malibu, not far from where he grew up. “But I’m feeling pretty good! Most guys my age have a bad back or knee pain. Somehow I dodged that.” The former high school baseball pitcher, who stays fit on his rowing machine, adds, “I just have a bad shoulder that I have to take Advil for.”

If it seems like life has slowed way (way!) down for the actor who spiraled into the depths of addiction in his 40s, faced countless tabloid scandals and endured two very public and ugly divorces, he says eight years of sobriety will do that to you. These days instead of benders with cocaine and call girls, he spends time meeting friends for coffee, visiting his parents and, until recently, wrapping up his debut memoir, The Book of Sheen (out Sept. 9), and the two-part Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen (Sept. 10). “It’s not about me setting the record straight or righting all the wrongs of my past,” Sheen says of sharing stories about just how much cocaine he was using and Hollywood bigwigs like Clint Eastwood and Les Moonves imploring him to go to rehab. “Most of my 50s were spent apologizing to the people I hurt. I also didn’t want to write from the place of being a victim. I wasn’t, and I own everything I did. It’s just me, finally telling the stories in the way they actually happened.” He jokes, “The stories I can remember, anyway.”

Sheen’s life was always destined to be unique. Born Carlos Irwin Estevez in New York City in 1965 to actor Martin Sheen and artist Janet Templeton, he spent his childhood with his two older brothers, Emilio and Ramon, and his younger sister Renée, tagging along on his dad’s film shoots—including months spent in the Philippines on the set of