Sharon Stone had a long road to recovery after having a near-fatal stroke in 2001. The actor said that she lost everything and went completely broke as a result.
In 2001, Stone suffered a nine-day brain bleed. Doctors thought she was faking her symptoms at first and almost sent her home. However, they realized how serious things were. She had a 1% chance of surviving. Afterwards, Stone told Hollywood Reporter that people took advantage of her.
She said, "People took advantage of me over that time. 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."
So how do you come back from that? Well, it took Stone years to recover. She said she had to let go of a lot of anger and bitterness in that time.
She said, "I decided to stay present and let go. 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. I live for a purpose."
She said that she went from being the talk of Hollywood to being cast out after her stroke. She said that she was forgotten about in a lot of ways.
Sharon Stone Was Cast Out
"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.
The jobs dried up in the years since.
"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."
However, Stone said the stroke ultimately changed her life. She said she feels like a different person.
She said, "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. 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. 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."
