Charlie Sheen said he regrets trading early retirement for a “fucking hashtag” following a public mental health “moment” a decade ago.
The actor was reflecting on his 2011 firing from his hugely popular CBS sitcom Two And A Half Men following a series of tumultuous events in his personal life, including his guilty plea to a charge of domestic violence.
Sheen was the highest paid actor on TV at the time, earning $1.81 million an episode.
In a new interview he recalled one particular moment when he now feels his career could have been saved.
He said top telly executives arrived at his home with an offer for him to fly via private jet immediately to rehab.
Sheen told Yahoo!: “There's a moment when [former CBS CEO] Les Moonves and his top lawyer, Bruce, were at my house and they said, ‘OK, the Warner jet is fueled up on the runway. Wheels up in an hour and going to rehab, right?'”
He didn't take the offer, saying all he could think about was being offered that chance to use the private jet.
He said: “If I could go back in time to that moment, I would've gotten on the jet.
“And it was that giant left turn in that moment that led to, you know, a very unfortunate sequence of public and insane events.”
In 2011 Sheen became a punchline after the troubled actor embarked on a bender to end all benders, infamously ranting about tiger blood and chicken dinners.
He chose to do rehab at home rather than attending the facility and after this ended, he promptly demanded a 50 percent pay rise and branded boss Chuck Lorre, “a stupid, stupid little man and a pussy punk that I’d never want to be like.” By May he had lost his role on the show.
Aside from a failed stint in Anger Management, the work dried up with one studio executive claiming the star had become “uninsurable.”
Then in 2015, the star, now 55, revealed he'd secretly been diagnosed with HIV four years earlier.
Having squandered ‘millions' to keep blackmailers quiet, the father-of-five admitted he used drugs and booze to cope with diagnosis.
His latest venture involves selling personalized greetings for birthdays, anniversaries and other celebrations through the Cameo website at a bargain price of $460.
