Charlie Sheen’s new documentary has left his daughter touched.
Sami Sheen shared her candid response to learning in aka Charlie Sheen why her father, with whom she has been estranged in recent years, embarked on his sobriety journey.
“I didn’t know,” the 21-year-old wrote over a clip of her gazing tearfully at the camera, “I was the reason he got sober.”
She captioned the Sept. 11 TikTok video, “Honestly a 10/10 documentary.”
Indeed, Charlie—who also shares Lola Sheen, 21, with ex-wife Denise Richards, in addition to twins Bob and Max Sheen, 17, with ex Brooke Mueller and daughter Cassandra Estevez, 40, with Paula Profit—not only recounts the pivotal incident from Sami’s childhood in the documentary, but also in his new memoir The Book of Sheen.
The moment occurred in 2017, he wrote, when Sami was 13 years old. The Two and A Half Men alum said he was on his “third” coffee and whiskey of the morning when Sami called asking where he was: she had an appointment he’d forgotten about, one he was supposed to drive her to.
Charlie said he “never mixed the cups with the wheel,” so called a family friend to drive him to Sami.
“On the drive back to my house, Sam was very quiet,” Charlie wrote. “I didn’t need to be clairvoyant to know exactly what she was thinking. Why is Dad not driving—again? Why isn’t it just the two of us in the car like it used to be? When will that moment ever return? When will Dad ever return? I miss him.”
The 60-year-old continued, “I missed him too. There was only one thing that felt worse than betraying myself, and that was failing my children. In that car, on that day, with my best friend and a child I adore, I joined Sam in those mirrors and saw a guy who was desperate to finally come home for real.”
That was the moment he decided to become sober, and Charlie says he’s remained that way ever since.
“Like I’ve always said, life comes down to doers and talkers, and there was really nothing left for me to say,” he wrote of the moment. “It was time to shut the f–k up and get busy doing. Sam wasn’t my final straw; she was my first harvest.”
While Charlie recently shared on Good Morning America that he doesn’t “really know” what he did to lead to his and Sami’s estrangement, she has shared it began when he didn’t reach out following her 2024 nose surgery. From there, a text conversation “tumbled into something really big,” she continued during her Apil appearance on the Casual Chaos podcast, and she said Charlie began sending her “some crazy stuff” and she decided to cut off contact.
“I’ve had him blocked for a minute now,” she went on. “I had to block his email as well, and then he actually got a new number on Christmas to text me other crazy stuff where I had to block that number. I had to put a stop to it and tell him, ‘Do not contact me ever again because this is crazy.’”
For more of Charlie’s most candid moments over the years, keep reading.
Did Charlie Sheen Really Shoot Kelly Preston?
The prevailing narrative for years was that Charlie Sheen accidentally shot then-girlfriend Kelly Preston in the arm when the two were living together in 1990. The evidence? Preston had a wound and Sheen was…well, he was who he was.
But that wasn’t really the case.
“It was an accident,” Preston, who died in 2020, told TMZ in 2011 when approached amid a spate of fresh headlines about her ex’s behavior. “He had put [the gun] in his pocket and it fell out and it went off.”
And according to Sheen, he wasn’t even in the room.
“I was downstairs early in the morning making coffee and I thought she was still asleep upstairs,” Sheen said in 2016 during a Vancouver stop on his My Violent Torpedo of Truth Tour. “And I heard a f–king gunshot go off.”
What Preston told him, Sheen continued, was that “the tiny revolver I used to carry…it fell out of the back jeans pocket and hit the floor and shot a bullet right between her legs. So, she got hit with shrapnel from the toilet bowl.”
Charlie Sheen Admitted to Spending $50,000 on Escorts
When Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss was on trial in June 1995, accused (and subsequently convicted) of tax evasion and money laundering, Sheen was revealed as one of her most high-profile clients.
In video testimony played in court, per the Los Angeles Times, Sheen said that he spent more than $50,000 on “sexual services,” utilizing Fleiss’ business to order escorts 27 times and also contacting “Heidi girls” directly at least 20 times.
“I apologize to my family, my future wife, my close friends, for any embarrassment these incidents may have caused,” Sheen, who was engaged to Donna Peele at the time, said in a statement through his rep. “I offer no other explanation for my actions, only the truth, which is contained in detail within my testimony. They wouldn’t call it ‘the past’ if it wasn’t.”
He and Peel tied the knot in September 1995 and divorced the following year.
Charlie Sheen Arrested for Allegedly Assaulting Brittany Ashland
Brittany Ashland accused the actor of grabbing her hair and pushing her to the floor, rendering her unconscious, at his L.A.-area home in December 1996.
Sheen pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery in June 1997 and was given a one-year suspended jail term, plus two years’ probation.
“I feel this is very fair, and I’m grateful,” the Hot Shots star told Malibu Municipal Court Judge Lawrence Mira at the time. “You will not see me back in this courtroom.”
Charlie Sheen’s Dad Martin Sheen Laid Down the Law After Overdose
In May 1998, Sheen was hospitalized for a cocaine overdose—which was brought to authorities’ attention by his father, The West Wing star Martin Sheen. A judge found Sheen to be in violation of his probation from his 1997 assault plea and ordered him into a drug rehabilitation program.
“In paying the bill, I got to see why he was in there,” Martin told AARP The Magazinein 2008. “He’d consumed an illegal substance; he was on probation…This was a criminal matter. And so that was the wedge; that was the leverage I had. That is what I took to the court; that’s what I took to the sheriff. It was the only way I got him.”
At the time, “It felt like the biggest betrayal you could possibly endure,” Sheen said in a September 2025 Good Morning America interview ahead of the premiere of his warts-and-all Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen and memoir The Book of Sheen.
Eventually, he “saw it as love,” the Major League actor continued. “But in the moment, it’s like, in the book when my bodyguard comes to the bedroom door and he says, ‘You know, the US Marshals are on the way. We’re leaving in five.'”
Charlie Sheen’s Messy Custody Battle With Ex-Wife Denise Richards
Sheen married Denise Richards on June 15, 2002. Their daughter Sami Sheen was born March 4, 2004, and LolaSheen arrived on June 1, 2005—three months after Richards filed for divorce.
They briefly reconciled, but by early 2006 the split was back on.
In filing for a temporary restraining order that April, Richards alleged Sheen had pushed and threatened to kill her.
Sheen denied the accusations, but a judge ordered him to stay 300 feet away from her and their daughters—except during supervised visits—for the time being.
“Obviously, what has taken place is vile, is unconscionable, is without merit, is a transparent and immature smear campaign,” Sheen said in a statement, per ABC News. “[Richards is] claiming certain things. It’s baseless.”
They reached a custody arrangement that May and a judge signed off on their divorce six months later, but—while they’re friendly now—they were in and out of court for years, and Richards was the target of more than a few of Sheen’s infamous Twitter tirades.
Charlie Sheen Arrested for Assaulting Brooke Mueller on Christmas
Sheen married real estate investor Brooke Mueller on May 30, 2008, and they welcomed twin sons Bob and Max in March 2009.
On Dec. 25, 2009, Sheen was arrested in Aspen, Colo., on domestic violence-related charges for allegedly assaulting his wife, who told police that the actor held a knife to her throat and said, “You better be in fear.”
Both spouses checked into rehab afterward. Sheen pleaded guilty in August 2010 to a reduced charge of misdemeanor assault and was allowed to return to treatment instead of go to jail.
He said in a statement, “I look forward to complying with the court’s decision, getting on with my life and putting this behind me.”
Charlie Sheen Hospitalized After Plaza Hotel Disturbance
Sheen was hospitalized in October 2010 for what his rep said was an “adverse reaction” to medication after cops were called to the Plaza Hotel in New York to respond to, per their report, an “emotionally disturbed individual.” Richards and their daughters were staying at the hotel in a separate suite, and porn actress Capri Anderson was in Sheen’s room at the time.
He and Mueller both filed for divorce on Nov. 1, with Sheen citing their date of separation as the day of their Aspen altercation. Their split was finalized in 2011.
Charlie Sheen Fired From Two and a Half Men
It’s hard to encapsulate just how bizarre Sheen’s 2011 war of words with Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre was—but ultimately the four-time Emmy nominee was fired from the hit CBS show after seven seasons.
Sheen’s subsequent lawsuit against Warner Bros. seeking $100 million for alleged wrongful termination was settled that September for a reported $25 million.
Reflecting on that tumultuous chapter in which he ranted about the “tiger blood” coursing through his veins and the “goddesses” he was keeping company with, Sheen concluded a decade later that he wasn’t “#winning” after all.
“People have [said to] me, ‘Hey, man, that was so cool, that was so fun to watch,” he told Yahoo! Entertainment in 2021. “That was so cool to be a part of and support and all that energy and, you know, we stuck it to the man. My thought behind that is, ‘Oh, yeah, great. I’m so glad that I traded early retirement for a f–king hashtag.'”
Charlie Sheen Reveals HIV-Positive Status
Sheen shared on Today in November 2015 that he found out “roughly four years ago” that he was HIV-positive.
“I was so depressed by the condition that I was in,” he recalled. “I was doing a lot of drugs. I was drinking way too much. I was making really bad decisions. That part I own, 100 percent.”
Sheen said he had paid people who demanded money for their silence “enough to where it has depleted the future.”
So, in confirming his status, he hoped to “release myself from this prison.”
Sami Sheen Says She Doesn’t Talk to Dad Charlie Sheen
Though she chose to live with her dad in 2021, Sami said in April 2025 that she hadn’t talked to Sheen in a year or texted with him for six months.
He started sending her “some crazy stuff,” she said on Gia Giudice’s Casual Chaos podcast, and “I’ve had him blocked for a minute now. I had to put a stop to it and tell him, ‘Do not contact me ever again because this is crazy.’”
Sheen said on GMA in September 2025 that “there’s always a shot for a better tomorrow” as far as reconciling goes, but “I don’t really know what I did, that’s the problem. I don’t know what I’m supposed to apologize for.”
But, the actor is confident that “this is not a forever thing. Her and I will work it out. We have a history of that that’s too valuable to let some moment destroy all of that.”
