<P> After being expelled from Juilliard School, Charlie moved back to Los Angeles with the intention of becoming a film composer . He met a commercial producer who listened to Charlie's work and thus, Charlie began his career writing jingles for a living . His most famous composition is the Maple Loops song . Charlie then became a successful composer and singer of children's music, with the alias "Charlie Waffles", when the jingle business dried up . He can be frequently seen playing the Steinway grand piano in his living room; said piano was later removed from the house by Walden Schmidt after his death . The character of Charlie Harper is loosely based on its actor Charlie Sheen . </P> <P> Charlie prides himself on his bachelor / playboy lifestyle in Malibu, L.A and drives a Mercedes, and used to own a Jaguar . He was also thinking of buying a Ferrari F430, or a Bentley . His lifestyle consists of living in a two - story beachfront home, drinking excessively, smoking cigars, taking drugs, constant womanizing, gambling, and usually wearing bowling shirts and shorts . Charlie sleeps in constantly, and retains a full - time housekeeper, Berta . Money "falls into his lap" as he lives a life of free - spirited debauchery . He has a vast range of phobias including stage fright (unless he is drunk), commitment, his mother, spiders, large birds, germs, change and hard work . </P> <P> Following Sheen's dismissal from the series in March 2011, the character was killed off in the ninth season, having supposedly been struck by a train while on vacation in Paris . Charlie's spirit, portrayed by Kathy Bates, returns as a hallucination to Alan, revealing that he is living in Hell as a ghost trapped in a woman's body . This storyline is later retroactively changed by the series finale, "Of Course He's Dead," in which Rose reveals that Charlie is, in fact, alive (albeit brainwashed) and has been kept prisoner in the basement of a house that she purchased in Sherman Oaks after returning to the United States . He escapes from Rose's basement and returns to the beach house . As he rings the doorbell, a piano that is being transported by helicopter falls from the sky, killing him . </P> <P> When Charlie's mother Evelyn was pregnant with him (for 7 and a half months), his parents thought that he was going to be a girl, since the ultrasound showed no signs of a penis . According to Evelyn, Charlie was always "a little drama queen" when he grew up . After his father died of food poisoning, Charlie and his brother Alan had three stepdads . The first, Harry Luther Gorsky, left Charlie's and Alan's mother for a young woman (Charlie refers to Harry as "a little tyrant"), and Evelyn was also present at his funeral, the second was a twitchy gay man from Texas who called him and Alan "buckaroos", and the third was "the Carpet King", a fat guy whom Charlie liked the most because he had "a grateful daughter". Well into his 40s, Charlie believed "the Carpet King" owned a carpeting business until his mother explained that the man's name was actually sexual slang rather than his profession . </P>

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