Denise Richards spilled the beans on her messy split from ex-husband Charlie Sheen during an interview with a leading magazine.
During an interview with PEOPLE magazine, Denise Richards opened up about her split from ex-husband Charlie Sheen, looking back at the early moments of her celebrity status. She admitted that as far as being famous was concerned, there were no rules about dealing with the attention.
The Wild Things actress went on to explain that dealing with popularity isn’t something that you can’t prepare someone for handling fame. “When I would do interviews I was very private, which I’m sure people now would find hard to believe because I’ve done reality shows and I’m on Instagram and stuff,” she explained.
“When I started out, they wanted to imagine the actor in that role. And we would do our best to keep it and keep our private life private,” Denise added. The 49-year-old actress, who recently announced her return to the big screen, revealed that being famous wasn’t always easy, particularly in terms of growing up in the spotlight.
“It was a hard thing to navigate and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I obviously went through a very public divorce. It was hard for me to comprehend that my public divorce affected my work,” she said. “I didn’t understand it at that time because I thought, ‘How come? That’s my private life. It shouldn’t affect my work.’ But it did,” Denise said.
Denise and Sheen called it off when the Scary Movie 3 actress was six months pregnant with their daughter, Lola, who is 15 now. Their divorce was made final in 2006. Denise, who also shares daughter Sami, 16 with Sheen noted that the months and years after their split were one of the hardest of her life.
She went on to reveal that the breakup affected her work too, although she thinks it shouldn’t have. “That was a hard thing for me to go through and deal with,” she admitted. “I just wanted to keep doing what I loved to do and keep plugging away.”
Fast forward to today, Denise is happily married to Aaron Phypers, and shares adopted daughter Eloise, 9, with him. She adopted Eloise seven years before tying the knot with Aaron in Malibu, and Denise said he was also in the process of legally adopting her as his own.
While Denise loves interacting with fans on social media, and it also gives her the ability to debunk rumors when they surface, she also sees the downside of things. “It’s hard being misunderstood and having stuff that is not true out there. My older daughters, they’re teenagers now and I can’t keep stuff away from them at all. They will hear everything. I miss the time when I was able to shelter them from the negative publicity around our family quite frankly,” she explained.