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Sharon Stone has revealed the impact that her ill health had on her career as she says the 'offers dried up' after she suffered a stroke and a brain haemorrhage.
The actress, 68, was forced to learn to walk, talk and read again but her previously flourishing career had 'disappeared' by the time she had recovered.
Sharon spoke to ELLE Spain in a special issue for its 40th anniversary, where she reflected on the setbacks she faced 25 years ago
The Hollywood star has two films pending release and is finishing an exhibition in Prague and has just played a powerful Hollywood executive in Euphoria.
Sharon is definitely back on top, but she suggests it took time to get there. The most interesting thing about this new stage is the way she looks back: without erasing the cracks, but also not letting them define her.
'Against all odds, I managed to recover, but the job offers disappeared.
Sharon Stone has revealed the impact that her ill health had on her career as she says the 'offers dried up' after she suffered a stroke and a brain haemorrhage
The actress, 68, was forced to learn to walk, talk and read again but her previously flourishing career had 'disappeared' by the time she had recovered
'At that time, if you were a woman and something happened to you, you were finished,' she recalls. That experience also taught her something that she strongly claims today: 'People don't know, or tend to forget, invisible disabilities.
'I think that women who are considered beautiful and intelligent are perceived in a very specific way, almost as if one thing cancels out the other,' she explains.
'People find it very difficult to understand that I am a fragile artist, physically small, shy, private, lonely, sweet, delicate and empathetic.'
Sharon had previously revealed that she allegedly lost millions in savings while recovering from the debilitating 2001 stroke.
In a 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sharon said the money she had accrued after more than two decades in the industry had evaporated during the years she was unable to work due to brain damage from the stroke.
Sharon attributed her loss of millions to people around her who allegedly mismanaged her money as she struggled to regain basic functions, like the ability to read, which she lost 'for a couple of years'.
In total, Sharon said it took her seven years to mostly recover from the effects of the life-threatening stroke, which doctors gave her just one in 100 odds of surviving.
'People took advantage of me over that [recovery] time,' Sharon claimed. 'I had $18 million saved because of all my success, but when I got back into my bank account, it was all gone.'
Sharon, who suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage in 2001, said her brain bled for nine days, which temporarily robbed her of her 'sense of smell, sight and touch' (pictured in 2001)
She described the surreal feeling of having little to her name one she was competent enough to take over her finances.
'My refrigerator, my phone — everything was in other people's names,' she revealed.
Sharon then clarified: 'I had zero money.'
It's not clear what Sharon had to pay in medical bills and years of therapies, but she described the severe symptoms caused by her subarachnoid haemorrhage.
'I bled into my brain for nine days, so my brain was shoved to the front of my face,' she explained, adding, 'It wasn't positioned in my head where it was before.'
The physical change to her brain meant that 'everything changed'.
'My sense of smell, my sight, my touch. I couldn't read for a couple of years,' the Oscar nominee admitted. 'Things were stretched and I was seeing color patterns.
'A lot of people thought I was going to die,' she added.
Beyond the changes to her senses, Sharon agreed 'one hundred percent' that the stroke changed how she thinks.
'A Buddhist monk told me that I had been reincarnated into my same body,' she shared. 'I had a death experience and then they brought me back.'
In addition to her difficulty reading for years to come, Sharon continued to suffer eyesight problems and had memory difficulties for years to come, which made it difficult for her to get acting jobs.
Despite the debilitating symptoms she lived with for years, Sharon said she was eventually able to move by 'stay[ing] present and let[ting] go'.
'I decided not to hang onto being sick or to any bitterness or anger,' she admitted. 'If you bite into the seed of bitterness, it never leaves you.
'But if you hold faith, even if that faith is the size of a mustard seed, you will survive. So, I live for joy now. I live for purpose,' Stone said defiantly.
English (US) ·