Sharon Stone Gets Candid About Life After Her Stroke: ‘People Treated Me in a Way That Was Brutally Unkind’

James Patrick Herman 1 hr ago

Sharon Stone is back. And after famously serving as amfAR’s Global Campaign Chair for 15 years, she’s taken on a new role as advocate for brain-aging diseases that disproportionally affect women. Only one third of Alzheimers patients are men, for instance. And don’t even get Stone started on strokes. “This is why I do it: My mother had a stroke. My grandmother had a stroke. I had a massive stroke — and a nine-day brain bleed,” she told Variety at an event she hosted to raise awareness for the Women’s Brain Health Initiative in West Hollywood on Wednesday night.

© Rob Latour/Variety/Shutterstock

They say that Hollywood loves a comeback but unfortunately, that has not been Stone’s experience. “People treated me in a way that was brutally unkind,” she said. And she wasn’t referring to men (other than perhaps her ex-husband Phil Bronstein). “From other women in my own business to the female judge who handled my custody case, 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.”

During that time, Stone suffered insurmountable losses, both professional and personal: “[From] trying to keep custody of my son to just functioning — to be able to work at all,” Stone added. “I was so grateful to [LVMH head and now the second-richest person in the world] Bernard Arnault, who rescued me by giving me a Dior contract. But I had to remortgage my house. I lost everything I had. I lost my place in the business. I was like the hottest movie star, you know?” she said, her voice trailing off. “It was like Miss Princess Diana and I were so famous — and she died and I had a stroke. And we were forgotten.”

But what Stone wants people to remember is her potentially life-saving advice: “if you have a really bad headache, you need to go to the hospital,” she said. “I didn’t get to the hospital until day three or four of my stroke. Most people die. I had a 1% chance of living by the time I got surgery — and they wouldn’t know for a month if I would live.” At the time, Stone wasn’t even aware of how dire her chances for survival were. “No one told me — I read it in a magazine,” she added.

The sister of “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” was another one of the lucky survivors of a brain aneurysm. “She had a massive headache and collapsed,” Jane Seymour told Variety. “She was not expected to live, and they had to close down [the set of] ‘Dr. Quinn.’ I was by her bedside the whole time. But she managed to relearn how to walk, talk and she’s good now. We call her the miracle.”

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