ACTOR CHARLIE SHEEN has revealed today that he is HIV positive.
A number of celebrity websites had reported that the star was likely to make this revelation yesterday, but NBC had given no details on what the actor would be discussing in an interview with him on the Today Show.
Speaking to Today Show co-anchor Matt Lauer, he said:
I’m here to admit that I am in fact HIV positive. And I have 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] threatening the health of so many others, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
In the interview, he said he first learned of his diagnosis around four years ago.
“It started with what I thought, based on this series of cluster headaches and insane migraines and sweating the bed completely drenched, two, three nights in a row, that I was emerging hospitalised. I thought I had a brain tumour, I thought it was over.”
Sheen said he had told people he thought he could trust.
However he said there had been a number of “shakedowns” whereby people had asked for money in exchange for covering up his diagnosis. He said he had paid people off “enough to bring it into the millions”.
He told Lauer that it is “impossible” that he has transmitted HIV to anyone since his diagnosis. He also said he is not entirely sure how he contracted the virus.
Sheen described today as being like his release from prison and said his ‘Tiger Blood/Winning phase’ was like a type of “roid rage”.
Read: Actor Charlie Sheen to make ‘revealing’ announcement as tabloid rumours swirl>
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