Sheen admits he has HIV, says he was blackmailed
Troubled television star Charlie Sheen revealed his HIV-positive status Tuesday, saying that he had paid people upward of $10 million to keep quiet about his condition and that he wanted to put a stop “to this onslaught, this barrage of attacks and of sub-truths and very harmful and mercurial stories that are about me.”
“I am in fact HIV-positive,” he said during a live interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s “Today” show.
Sheen said that part of his goal in coming forward was to put an end to the payments he was making to keep people quiet. “I think that I release myself from this prison today,” he said.
The actor said he had known about the diagnosis for about four years but did not know how he contracted the virus. At first, he said, he thought he had a brain tumor. “It is a hard three letters to absorb,” he said.
In an open letter published on the “Today” website Tuesday, Sheen, 50, said that the diagnosis had led to “a temporary yet abysmal descent into profound substance abuse and fathomless drinking” that he called “a suicide run.”
He said that during the period he “dazedly chose (or hired) the companionship of unsavory and insipid types.”
“Regardless of their salt-less reputations, I always lead with condoms and honesty when it came to my condition,” he said. “Sadly, my truth soon became their treason, as a deluge of blackmail and extortion took center stage in this circus of deceit.” He did not provide specifics about the claims of extortion.
Sheen said he had disclosed his diagnosis to all of his sex partners.
Hours after the interview, one of his former girlfriends said that she learned about Sheen’s HIV diagnosis “right along with everyone else.”
Bree Olson, a former actress in pornographic movies, said that she was involved with Sheen for about a year and lived with him for about six months during the time after his HIV diagnosis. “He never said anything to me,” Olson said on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM Radio show. “I was his girlfriend. I lived with him. We were together. We had sex almost every day for a year.”