Clint Eastwood's life-changing call to Charlie Sheen that convinced him to go to rehab

Charlie Sheen has revealed Clint Eastwood convinced him go to rehab after his drug abuse had driven him completely off the rails.

The Hollywood star has made no secret of his chaotic lifestyle and addiction struggles over the years. But he has laid them bare in a Netflix series, aka Charlie Sheen, detailing how he flew a plane drunk and smuggled cocaine on to a flight while high with Nicolas Cage.

But it was the 1990 phone call from Clint, with whom he had just starred in The Rookie, that had made him finally seek help. Worried about his binges, his family decided to stage an intervention. On the pretence of organising a birthday celebration for his father Martin, Charlie arrived and was asked by his mother Janet if he was armed.

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“I thought she was joking,” he recalls. “But maybe there’s something in the trunk…”

His friends and family were also at the intervention, including his brother Emilio Estevez.

“There’s my yoga instructor, and Rob Lowe... And then there’s Emilio... my parents.”

Martin had also asked Clint to speak to him on the phone. Charlie says: “I said, ‘Hello’ and it’s that very recognisable, globally famous voice, ‘It’s Clint’.

“He said something to the effect of ‘You gotta get the train back on the tracks, kid. You’re worth saving’.

“It was really powerful. I thanked him, gave the phone back to my dad and said, ‘All right, let’s go’.”

But the battle against his addictions was not plain sailing.

During his stint in rehab, Charlie reveals how he was desperate to leave so he could judge a bikini contest in California with pal Cage.

In order to be allowed out of the facility, he promised the night nurse he would come back by 8am or he would pay her $1million. He made it back with 20 minutes to spare.

“The nurse was happy for me, but disappointed for herself.”

However, it was during filming for 1997 action comedy Money Talks with Chris Tucker that Charlie’s drug use became really out of control.

“I got an 18-hour nosebleed from doing too much cocaine,” he says, “I just kept kind of blotting it. There was one night where it actually dripped on to my shirt during a scene. I got the director, Brett Ratner, to make that shot go away forever.”

Charlie also reveals he was wasted while in charge of a plane. He was on honeymoon with his third wife, Brooke Mueller, when the starstruck flight crew invited him into the cockpit to take the controls.

“I’m there drunk, with close to 300 people asleep behind me, an angry bride 20 feet behind me, and I start guiding this plane.”

And in another incident, Charlie says he and Cage gave another meaning to the “Mile-High Club” on a flight, with the Leaving Las Vegas star grabbing the intercom.

Charlie says: “He launched into, ‘This is your captain speaking. I’m not feeling well. I’m losing control’. He had taken it to a place where his intentions were just wildly inappropriate. You could hear screaming.”

The plane was met by armed police as it landed in San Francisco.

“Nic didn’t know I had over an ounce of cocaine taped to the inside of my leg,” he explains. “I’m sweating and really concerned about what’s going to happen next.”

Charlie claims that initially he did not want to be involved with the documentary and that he had “made a sacred vow to only reveal to a therapist”. But he changed his mind, instead insisting nothing is “off limits”.

So much so, Charlie, now 60, recalls how he struggled to keep awake filming 1998 dark comedy Free Money so he took drastic measures. “There was a little bathroom, and I went in there, and I took an ice cube and I shoved it up my butt. Never done that before. And, man, I was wide awake just enough to get back on the mark and finish the scene.”

aka Charlie Sheen is available to stream on Netflix.

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