Overview

Charlie Sheen is a great celebrity to study because he has been in both American movies and television shows for about twenty-five years and is surrounded by all kinds of issues that are heavily covered in the media. His heavy drug use and “winning” attitude have drawn the eyes of millions of Americans.
Sheen, now 46, was born to well-known actor Martin Sheen, and Charlie and his brother Emilio Estevez both followed in their father’s path. Charlie’s early movie career consists of films like the Vietnam War drama Platoon (Stone, 1985) and he eventually went onto a more comical role with movies like Major League (Ward, 1989), Major League 2 (Ward, 1994), Scary Movie 3 (Zucker, 2003), and Scary Movie 4 (Zucker, 2006). He followed his career in film with the television hits Spin City (Gary David Goldberg, Bill Lawrence, ABC, 1996-02) and the one he’s most famous for, Two and a Half Men (Lee Aronsohn, Chuck Lorre, CBS, 2003-).

Two and a Half Men premiered on CBS in 2003. The show was based around Charlie Sheen and his bad boy image. While starring on the show Sheen received three Emmy Award nominations and two Golden Globe Award nominations. In 2010 he signed on to return to the sitcom for $1.8 million an episode making him the highest paid television actor per episode (Wikipedia.org, “Charlie Sheen”). Soon later Sheen ran into severe drug use problems that became publicly known, as well as problems with CBS, which eventually led to him being fired.
Recently Sheen has been interviewed on national news programming, and with his careless lifestyle and bad boy image he has gained great popularity. A couple months ago Sheen set a record for the fastest person to one million followers on Twitter. On March 10 he announced a nationwide tour, “My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not An Option”, which sold out in a matter of minutes of being available. Sheen is no longer with his former porn star goddesses, and instead has moved on to new projects including segments with FunnyOrDie.com, a song with Snoop Dogg, a possible new sitcom in replace of Two and a Half Men, is reported to be featured on the August cover of Gentleman’s Quarterly United Kingdom, and will be publicly “roasted” on Comedy Central’s Roast of Charlie Sheen.
Charlie Sheen is a great celebrity to study because of the successful career he has had along with the lifestyle he has lived. His bad boy image feeds his popularity and has only made him a larger star. No matter if you like Charlie Sheen or not everyone has something to say about him, including the media and even celebrities. Justin Bieber said to TIME magazine in regards to the “most influential person” in the world right now, “[It] has got to be Charlie Sheen. He's got a million followers in one day on Twitter. And . . . I've never seen that happen before. Plus, he's got tiger blood, and he's always winning" (NYPost.com, “Charlie’s Man”). How Sheen chooses to image himself through social media outlets and how the media portrays him combined with how the audience perceives him is what we aim to analyze and determine how he is an influence on American culture.