Sharon Stone should be dead right now — at least according to the doctors who gave her
a 1 percent survival prognosis.
And that's just scratching the surface of her tragic life.
As a child, both Sharon Stone and her sister, Kelly, were sexually abused by their grandfather.
However, it wasn't until a therapy session many years later that Sharon remembered the
abuse had occurred.
She told The New Yorker:
"I came to understand that my abuse started really, really young.
... I just started screaming, 'Who does that?,' because I had had such a mental block that
someone could abuse such a young child."
In her memoir, "The Beauty of Living Twice," Stone revealed her grandfather died when she
was 14.
Upon seeing his body at the funeral, she admitted to being glad he was gone, unable to harm
her ever again.
Despite having endured horrific abuse together, the sisters didn't discuss it until they were
in their 20s.
Sharon wrote in her memoir:
"Our mother later said she didn't know about her father's perverse behavior toward us during
our toddler and elementary years [...] She hated him."
Regarding her childhood, Sharon Stone bluntly told The New Yorker:
"I was a social disaster, like I still am."
The grim sentiment relates to the fact that, as a child, she faced multiple tragedies in
addition to the sexual abuse she suffered.
Her uncle Gene was at the center of much of this devastation.
When Stone was a young girl, Gene froze to death.
As she recounted in her memoir, his body was found on the front steps of his cottage, where
it was surrounded by copious amounts of blood due to a head injury he'd suffered from falling
down.
Gene struggled with numerous psychological problems, and he once threatened to shoot
himself in front of Stone when she was a child.
Stone's mother had a flippant attitude towards Gene's suicidal ideation, and the actor admitted
this belief rubbed off on her — something the Daily Mail criticized her for.
In addition to her trauma stemming from her relatives, Stone was severely injured on multiple
occasions as a child.
After a horse riding accident, she damaged her neck, according to The New York Times.
Another freak accident saw her get hit by lightning, resulting in injuries that lingered
for a significant period of time.
She told The New Yorker:
"I have a prolapsed valve [...] I had to keep going back and get EKGs for a couple of weeks,
because I kept measuring this really erratic electricity in my body."
In 2001, Sharon Stone had a stroke that left her with a 1% chance of survival.
"And they realized that my vertebral artery had ruptured, and was now hanging by a thread."
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor said doctors didn't take her health
issues seriously, believing that — true to her profession — she was acting.
However, it was eventually discovered that she had experienced a massive stroke and had
a brain hemorrhage.
Her recovery took many years.
Speaking with The New Yorker, she revealed she's still suffering from the effects of
the brain injury.
She told the outlet:
"My brain seizes 24/7 [...] When I have a cold, or like now, I'm in late-stage menopause,
my brain swells."
Stone said she first had warning signs when making "Basic Instinct" a decade earlier,
but director Paul Verhoeven dismissed the leading lady's seizure-like symptoms as the
result of drug use, despite the fact that Stone wasn't using.
To make a difficult situation even worse, she disclosed that no one wanted to know her
after the stroke.
She told Variety:
"People treated me in a way that was brutally unkind.
I don't think anyone grasps how dangerous a stroke is for women and what it takes to
recover — it took me about seven years."
In an interview with Closer Weekly, she said the experience helped her come to terms with
her own mortality, explaining that the stroke impaired her ability to talk, hear, and walk.
Ultimately, her children's love helped Stone get through the agonizing ordeal.
According to ABC News, Sharon Stone was embroiled in a bitter custody battle over her eldest
son, Roan, in 2008, after ex-husband Phil Bronstein accused her of overreacting to their
child's ailments.
The outlet reported that Stone erroneously believed her son had a spinal cord condition
and acted in an inappropriate manner with regards to his foot odor, wanting to get Botox
injected into his feet to stop them from sweating.
Accordingly, a judge ruled that Stone was an unfit parent, and she subsequently lost
custody of her son.
Deeming Stone's actions to be reprehensible, the judge claimed the actor was, quote, "unable
to provide the structure, continuity and reliability that Roan needs, and candidly, deserves."
However, Stone said her ex fabricated the claims of unfit motherhood in order to take
her child away.
In an interview with Saga, she said that she couldn't cope with the loss and would lay
down and cry all day after being forced to say goodbye to her boy.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, she has since regained custody of Roan.
In her memoir, Stone revealed the extent of the sexism she faced in Hollywood.
In one instance, a producer reportedly berated her and told her she wasn't good enough for
a movie role and refused to call her by her name.
Shaken by the ordeal, Stone crashed her car after the meeting.
She also divulged her experiences with sexual harassment and assault.
Discussing the arguable rape culture of Hollywood amid the myriad of abuse claims levied against
producers and directors, she said:
"This inaction is a true and real crime in itself."
One of the most shocking manifestations of Stone's sexist mistreatment occurred on the
set of "Basic Instinct."
The actor alleged she was tricked into doing the infamous leg crossing scene, stating she
was told by director Paul Verhoeven that she had to remove her white underwear because
it was causing a glare on the film.
"Wow."
After watching the final cut, Stone discovered Verhoeven's claim was just a ruse to get her
to expose her genitalia, though Verhoeven vehemently denies the allegation.
Adoption in Hollywood is commonplace.
While many celebs, such as Angelina Jolie, have a brood of both biological and adopted
kids, for others, adoption is the only option.
Stone has three adopted children: Roan, who she welcomed with ex-husband Phil Bronstein,
and Laird and Quinn, who she adopted as a single mom.
Although she is a dedicated parent now, Stone initially struggled to create a family.
In an interview with Closer Weekly, the actor revealed that an autoimmune disease prevented
her from having biological children.
Although Stone hasn't explicitly stated what condition she has, she's hinted at it being
lupus, which her sister, Kelly Stone, also has.
She told Extra:
"I can say that I had three, five-and-a-half-month miscarriages and no one had any answer for
me, what's going on, why is this happening to me."
In an interview with Elle Spain, she disclosed that she also has endometriosis, a chronic
illness that affects the reproductive system.
She blamed the condition for her miscarriages, detailing its debilitating and excruciating
effects on her body.
Regarding the struggles she faced when trying to become a mother, she told an audience at
the Associates For Breast and Prostate Cancer Studies that adoption blessed her with the
family she had always wanted.
She sweetly said:
"Motherhood didn't come easily, but it came lovingly to me by angels."
Sharon Stone is famed for her love of dogs, having adopted a number of pooches.
In 2018 she welcomed Bandit, who joined Stone's older dog, Joe "Biggy" Stone.
The elder canine was, by Stone's own admission, a tad jealous of the adorable upstart.
But the dogs' time together would prove to be all too brief.
Sadly, Joe died in 2022.
Sharing a snap of her cuddling the tragically departed dog on Instagram, Stone wrote:
"We lost Joe, the brindle, two weeks ago, just ready to share."
The previous year, she had shared a photo of herself sunbathing with a somewhat frail-looking
Joe, revealing that he was recently discharged from the vet, which suggests that her companion
had been unwell for some time.
The late dog was beloved by many.
According to Hello!, numerous celebs paid tribute to him, including A-lister Naomi Campbell.
A couple of months after Joe died, a video surfaced of Stone paying tribute to her canine
companions.
Reading a poem by Margaret Bruner, Stone poignantly said:
"Sometimes it seems as if a dog can sense one's thoughts more quickly than a human can
[...] Very few of all the wise and learned of earth possess this strange, uncanny power
to understand man's deepest moods of utter loneliness."
Tragically, Sharon Stone's experience with stroke was not over after her own long road
to recovery, as her mother has also had a life-threatening one in the winter of 2021.
She took to Instagram to ask her followers for prayers after she revealed what had happened
to her mother.
In her post, she disclosed that this wasn't the first stroke she'd suffered.
Luckily, Dorothy survived the trauma, thanks to Sharon's sister, Kelly Stone.
In a follow-up post, Sharon wrote:
"Thank you Kelly, your compassion and nursing skills quite literally have saved mom."
Posting an update a few months later, the actor shared a photo that showed her mom looking
happier and healthier, albeit rather frail, during a lunch date with family and friends.
Sharon added:
"When you are raised by wolves; you rise like a wolf."
In an interview with Variety two years earlier, Sharon explained that stroke ran throughout
her family, with her grandmother, mother, and herself all having had one.
Accordingly, she campaigns for greater awareness of brain diseases that tend to affect women
more than men, and urges people to seek medical care if they have severe headaches, which
may potentially be a sign of a deadly stroke.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available.
Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline
at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).