Netflix’s two‑part documentary AKA Charlie Sheen, directed by Andrew Renzi and released Wednesday, delivers a lengthy, often lurid portrait of the actor through a series of interviews and a central, extended interview with Sheen himself.
The film, which spans roughly three hours across two installments, pairs Sheen’s on‑camera recollections with testimony from ex‑wives Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller, friends and colleagues including Jon Cryer, Sean Penn, Tony Todd and Ramon Estevez, and participants from Sheen’s circle. Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez declined to be interviewed for the project. Sheen, who this week published a memoir, The Book of Sheen, tells the camera he is seven years sober while revisiting decades of addiction, legal entanglements and public breakdowns.
In moments that Renzi frames as confessions never before spoken publicly, Sheen acknowledges sexual encounters with men, telling the director that speaking openly about the encounters was "fucking liberating." On camera he used a metaphor of a menu to describe sexual experimentation during periods of heavy drug use and said experimentation began after his crack use, adding that parts of the experience were "weird" and "a lot of it was fucking fun. Life goes on," he said.
Renzi raises earlier allegations that Sheen sexually abused the late actor Corey Haim during the filming of the 1986 movie Lucas, claims brought forward in the 2020 documentary My Truth: The Rape of 2 Coreys. Sheen called those accusations "absolute fucking bullshit" and blamed the allegations on Corey Feldman, who produced the earlier documentary, saying he should have taken legal action but chose not to give Feldman "that much more content."
The film also includes a string of physical and drug‑related anecdotes that underscore the chaos of Sheen’s past. Sheen recounts a 1998 episode while shooting the movie Free Money when he said heavy cocaine use left him struggling to stay awake on set. He told the camera he asked for a cup of ice, took it to a bathroom stall and inserted an ice cube rectally to jolt himself awake, then returned to finish the scene.
Sheen addresses allegations that he hid his HIV diagnosis from sexual partners, denying that he transmitted the virus to anyone. He told Renzi he paid off several women who threatened to expose his status, saying he had offered "half a mil" in some cases and that at least one woman received $1.4 million. "Nobody got this from me, period, the end. Full stop," Sheen said in the film.
Denise Richards, who appears in the documentary, described hardships during her marriage to Sheen and alluded to domestic turmoil, including an incident she described as Sheen taking "a baseball bat to all the TVs." Richards said she took part in the project to prevent a glossed‑over account. She also recounted an episode after their divorce in which she prepared food on the set of Two and a Half Men for Sheen and for women she described as sex workers working for him.
Jon Cryer, Sheen’s former Two and a Half Men co‑star, recalled the period when Sheen sought to leave the show and ultimately received a lucrative contract that made him television’s highest‑paid actor at the time. Cryer compared the studio’s response to Sheen’s behavior to rewarding a volatile leader, saying, "The dictator of North Korea was a guy named Kim Jong Il. He acted crazy all the time, and thus got enormous amounts of aid from countries who were so scared of him, that they would shovel money at him. Well, that’s what happened here."
Heidi Fleiss, who served prison time after running a Los Angeles‑based prostitution operation, appears in the documentary and is sharply critical of Sheen for testifying against her in 1995. Fleiss said Sheen should have accepted prosecution rather than cooperating and called him "a crybaby pussy bitch," a phrase she uses on camera while recounting the episode in which Sheen’s name appeared in connection with her operation and prosecutors offered him the chance to testify in exchange for dropped charges.
Several of Sheen’s more dramatic anecdotes open or punctuate the film. He tells a story of being drunk aboard a passenger plane, being invited into the cockpit and briefly flying the aircraft after the pilot disengaged autopilot. He also includes a description from a drug dealer in his orbit — identified in the film as Marco — who said counselors asked him to make Sheen’s crack weaker to help wean him off the drug; Marco said it took about a year and a half for that strategy to work, and Sheen expressed gratitude that the ruse aided his sobriety.
The documentary closes on scenes intended to depict Sheen’s role as a father to his teenage son, Bob, including photographs and music, but also includes examples of Sheen’s hawkish parenting style: the film shows images of Post‑It notes Sheen wrote around the house that call his son a "lazy c—" and include the phrase "Go fuck yourself," remarks Bob describes as part of their current tensions.
Renzi’s film revisits public episodes that have long defined Sheen’s career and personal life, combining archival footage with contemporary interviews that in many cases revisit allegations and memories already in the public record. Several central allegations, including claims made in the 2020 My Truth documentary, are directly addressed and denied on camera by Sheen.
AKA Charlie Sheen presents a mix of confession, denial and recollection from multiple perspectives. The project accompanies Sheen’s new memoir and comes as the actor seeks to frame his life in his own words after decades of controversy and public scrutiny.