Sheen, Richards Prepare for Parenthood

Oct. 3, 2003 -- Thwack! … thwack! … thwack! …

Watch Chris Connelly's full interview tonight on 20/20 at 10 p.m.

With his smooth, left-handed swing, Charlie Sheen can hit a baseball with the authority of one who's spent a lifetime loving the game. Sheen knows that in baseball even the best hitters fail more than they succeed — but the game, like life, offers second chances.

Now when he takes his cuts at the plate, as he did on a brilliant afternoon in Central Park, Sheen says he can savor the sweet taste of professional and personal redemption. "I feel like I'm living somebody else' s life, you know?" he says. "It's the life I've always dreamed of."

It can be hard to imagine this healthy and vibrant 37-year-old Charlie Sheen as the same man who descended into a haze of drink, drugs, and dissipation — and who came close to becoming another sad statistic in Hollywood's litany of lost promise. As he says, "I went as low as a guy can go and still have a heartbeat."

Love at First Sight

But after facing up to his addictions, without losing his sense of humor, this Hollywood player really is safe at home, thanks to a revivified career and his stunning spouse, actress Denise Richards, now pregnant with the couple's first child.

Asked what's sexy about being married to a pregnant woman, Sheen has to consider the answer for a moment, as he sits alongside Richards, 32, on a sofa in their Southern California hideaway. "It's so new and it's so different. Uh, so I can't really put my finger on what is sexy about it."

"My breasts are fuller," offers Richards helpfully.

"They're huge," agrees Sheen, as he and Richards laugh.

Sheen says he was smitten pretty much from the moment he first laid eyes on Richards — at a casting session for the romantic comedy, Good Advice.

"When we first met and Denise walked in the room," Sheen says, "suddenly English wasn't my first language."

He turns to her. "You're the prettiest woman I've ever laid eyes on … and that you don't know that is insane!"

Richards says the feeling was immediately mutual. "He's got the most beautiful face of a man … and the kindest. He's just gorgeous. It was hard for me to do scenes with him and ..."

" Not want me?" Sheen interjects. "You wanted me, didn't you?"

"I did, I did!" she replies. "We had to do a love scene. I was so nervous, and I couldn't stop laughing during the scene. I was just so embarrassed, 'cause I was just so attracted to him."

So what's it like to do a love scene with a woman you're really attracted to, but whom you haven't discussed your feelings for yet? "Pretty surreal," says Sheen. "It's godd--n frustrating, that's what it is."

A Powerful Example for Other ‘Bad Boys’

By the time Richards and Sheen finally connected a few months later — during her guest-starring stint on the sitcom Spin City — the frustration was over and the romance was on. From the start, they were a stunning couple — Richards, the luscious, full-lipped Bond babe; Sheen, the onetime Hollywood hell-raiser.

It's a big transition from Sheen's days of womanizing … yet as Richards interjects, "Who wouldn't have? Who wouldn't that can have anything and all different ones and every fantasy? He was young.

"Lucky me," she adds with a smile, "I married a man who was very experienced with women."

That he was … though in past years, Sheen has had to admit that some of those women were prostitutes. Why prostitutes for a guy that can get any woman in town? "I just got tired of going out, I got tired of the paparazzi. So it was based on convenience."

Why wasn't he in a real relationship? "I was," Sheen says with a grin. "I was in a real relationship every night!" He and Richards again share a laugh.

After a long battle with drink and drugs, a 1998 brush with death, Sheen has stayed sober and drug-free for five years. He's handled his disease with such grace that he's become a powerful example to other celebrities who've come to him for help with their problems — including actor Ben Affleck, whom he drove to rehab.

‘A Little Embarrassing’

"It's a little embarrassing," he says of his wild years. "If I had known at the time that I'd have to sit here years later, sober with my pregnant wife talking about it, I probably would have done less. And been a little more discreet about it."

"I don't even know that person," Richards says. "One of the things that I love about him is he is so open. The amount of people that this man helps get sober, and the amount of phone calls that we get from people that need help — he is the first one that they go to. I would love for people to really know him the way I do."

Sheen's new sobriety has earned him professional trust as well. Spin City showed that Sheen could handle the weekly rigors of a TV series … and this season, he's starring in 2½ Men, a sitcom in which Sheen plays a rakish bachelor whose brother and 10-year-old son come to live with him.

Later this month on the big screen, Sheen stars and Richards has a cameo in the sci-fi spoof sequel from Dimension Films, Scary Movie 3 — a movie that once again showcases the flair of deadpan humor that's been one of Sheen's trademarks ever since Hot Shots!. "That stuff is in sort of in my zone, you know," he said.

Last year, Sheen and Richards were married. "I always dreamed about it," says Richards. "To be swept off my feet and marry the man of my dreams. … We're really in love with each other. I really found the man of my dreams."

"The life I have today, I couldn't have dreamed of," says Sheen. "But it's OK, because I feel like I've earned the right to have this life today."