Charlie Sheen's Biggest Hollywood Regret Might Surprise You
Time does funny things to people. It turns half men into men, men into television celebrities, and television celebrities into social media banana factories that run 24/7 in the noble pursuit of #winning.
At least that's what happened to Charlie Sheen: Son of Martin, star of "Wall Street," and for eight glorious seasons of "Two and a Half Men," the beloved Uncle Charlie to a nation of Jake Harpers. Then, in 2011, in the wake of a contentious court case with his ex-wife and a public dispute with the show's creator, Chuck Lorre, Sheen was let go from his position as the highest paid actor on TV. The then-45-year-old actor and Emmy nominee became a gatling gun loaded with sound bites — he had "tiger blood," he was a "warlock," and he was tired of pretending that he wasn't a "rock star from Mars."
But like we said, time does funny things to people. Ten years after that first wave of constant, mind-bending weirdness, Sheen looked back and pointed to his personal high-water mark of regret — namely, the fact that he asked his boss for a raise.
Uncle Charlie regrets making such a big Sheen
"There was 55 different ways for me to handle that situation, and I chose number 56," Charlie Sheen told Yahoo! Entertainment of his response to a pay dispute in the waning days of his "Two and a Half Men" tenure. "And so, you know, I think the growth for me post-meltdown or melt forward or melt somewhere, however you want to label it, it has to start with absolute ownership of my role in all of it," he continued. "And it was desperately juvenile."
Sheen's approach to trying to inflate his already impressive salary — reported at an astonishing $2 million an episode at the time of his dismissal — wasn't the only regret that the actor brought up. The flaming tornado of social media shenanigans that he sat at the center of was also a sore subject. Speaking of the supportive comments that people have made following his tiger blood phase, the actor stated "My thought behind that is, 'Oh, yeah, great. I'm so glad that I traded early retirement for a f***ing hashtag.'" There's a lesson there for all of us.