US actor Charlie Sheen, as well known for his on-screen work as his off-screen debauchery with drugs, alcohol and prostitutes, disclosed Tuesday that he is HIV positive.
“I am here to admit that I am in fact HIV positive and I have to put a stop to this onslaught, this barrage of attacks, of sub-truths – very harmful … stories that are threatening the health of so many others,” the actor told NBC’s Today show on Tuesday.
Celebrity website TMZ earlier said Sheen, who was fired in 2011 from the top-rated Two and a Half Men set after a much-publicised spat with Warner Bros. over his behaviour, was making his HIV status public because several former partners were threatening him with lawsuits.
TMZ claimed the 50-year-old actor had known about his status for more than a year, but had kept it confidential, sharing it only with several friends — who spread the information.
“That led to several of Charlie’s former partners contacting him and threatening a lawsuit because they were unaware of his status when they had interaction with him,” TMZ said.
“Our sources say Charlie settled several of the cases and, in return for money, got confidentiality agreements.”
The news spread quickly on Monday, making the actor one of the top 10 surges on worldwide trends on Twitter on Monday, and Google searches for his name associated with HIV exploded, according to Google.
Sheen, the son of movie star Martin Sheen, rose to fame after starring in a number of hit films including Platoon and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, both released in 1986. His career took off further as he became known for his television roles — Spin City, Two and a Half Men and most recently, Anger Management.
In ‘Two and half men’, Sheen played the womanising bachelor Charlie Harper for a long period of eight years before being fired in 2011 for bad behaviour that included cocaine-fuelled partying with porn stars and a conviction for assaulting his ex-wife.
The three times divorced Sheen then set up home with a number of porn stars he called “goddesses” and delivered a series of rants on YouTube boasting of having “tiger blood” in his veins.
Access Hollywood, a nightly entertainment programme, said on its website that Sheen’s former wife Denise Richards, with whom he has two daughters, had long known that he was HIV positive. Quoting a source close to Richards, it said Sheen contracted the virus after the couple divorced in 2006.
(With AFP inputs)