Sharon Stone was left with ‘zero money’ to her name after suffering a stroke in 2001.
The 66-year-old “Basic Instinct” actress opened up about the financial fallout from the health crisis, which took seven years to recover from, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Tuesday.
“People took advantage of me during that time,” Stone said. “I had $18 million saved up 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 hemorrhage, giving her 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 for brain surgery.
The whole ordeal forced the Oscar nominee to take a two-year break from acting.
Despite the hardships, Stone said she was not bitter about what happened to her.
“I decided to stay present and let go,” she explained to THR. “I decided not to hold on to any illness or any bitterness or anger. If you bite into the seed of bitterness, it never leaves you. But if you hold on to 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 the stroke changed her forever.
“A Buddhist monk told me I was reincarnated in the same body. I had a death experience and then they brought me back,” she recalls. “I was bleeding in my brain for nine days, so my brain was pushed to the front of my face. It wasn’t in the place in my head where it used to be.”
“And as that happened, everything changed,” she continued. “My sense of smell, my sight, my sense of touch. I couldn’t read for a couple of years. Things were stretched out and I saw patterns of color. A lot of people thought I was going to die.”
But Stone noted that the “good part” of her stroke was that at the time she was divorcing her second husband, news editor Phil Bronstein.
“That was the advantage,” 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 most popular 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’re at the back of the line in your company, just like I was. You have to completely reinvent yourself,” she added.
Last year, Stone said her career was not the same because of the brain hemorrhage.
“I’ve been in recovery for seven years and I haven’t had a job since,” she said at The Hollywood Reporter’s Raising Our Voices event. “When it first happened, I didn’t want to tell anyone 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 “used to be a really big movie star,” but that she now has a harder time finding work.