Sharon Stone had “zero money” to her name after she suffered a stroke in 2001.
The “Basic Instinct” actress, 66, opened up about how her finances took a hit following the health crisis that required seven years of recovery in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Tuesday.
“People took advantage of me over that time,” Stone said. “I had $18 million saved because of all my success, but when I got back into my bank account, it was all gone. My refrigerator, my phone — everything was in other people’s names.”
“I had zero money,” she added.
Stone suffered a nine-day brain bleed, which resulted in a 1 percent chance of survival. She claimed last year that doctors thought she was “faking it” and nearly sent her home before reevaluating her and sending her into brain surgery.
The whole ordeal forced the Oscar nominee to step away from acting for two years.
Despite the hardship, Stone said that she wasn’t bitter about what happened to her.
“I decided to stay present and let go,” she explained to THR. “I decided not to hang onto being sick or to any bitterness or anger. 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,” Stone added. “I live for purpose.”
The “Casino” actress also said that the stroke changed her forever.
“A Buddhist monk told me that I had been reincarnated into my same body. I had a death experience and then they brought me back,” she recalled. “I bled into my brain for nine days, so my brain was shoved to the front of my face. It wasn’t positioned in my head where it was before.”
“And while that was happening, everything changed,” she continued. “My sense of smell, my sight, my touch. I couldn’t read for a couple of years. Things were stretched and I was seeing color patterns. A lot of people thought I was going to die.”
But Stone noted that “the good part” of her stroke was that she got divorced from her second husband, news editor Phil Bronstein, during that time.
“That was the upside,” she said.
In 2019, Stone told Variety that she “lost everything she had” after the stroke.
“I lost my place in the business. I was like the hottest movie star, you know? It was like Miss Princess Diana and I were so famous — and she died and I had a stroke. And we were forgotten,” she explained.
“You find yourself at the back of the line in your business, as I did. You have to figure yourself out all over again,” she added.
Last year, Stone said her career hasn’t been the same because of the brain hemorrhage.
“I recovered for seven years, and I haven’t had jobs since,” she said at The Hollywood Reporter’s Raising Our Voices event. “When it first happened, I didn’t want to tell anybody because you know if something goes wrong with you, you’re out. Something went wrong with me — I’ve been out for 20 years.”
Stone stressed that she was “a very big movie star at one point in my life,” but now she has a harder time finding work.
