Sharon Stone says Hollywood ignored her for 20 years after stroke

Movies

By Nika Shakhnazarova

June 2, 2023 | 7:09am

Sharon Stone said she was snubbed by Hollywood after suffering a stroke over two decades ago.

The “Basic Instinct” star, 65, was rushed to the hospital in 2001 after suffering a brain hemorrhage that lasted nine days.

The health scare forced her to step away from the silver screen for two years — but those two years soon turned into a much longer, unwelcome break.

“I recovered for seven years, and I haven’t had jobs since,” she said at The Hollywood Reporter’s Raising Our Voices event Wednesday.

“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.”

“I haven’t had jobs. I was a very big movie star at one point in my life,” Stone added.

While Stone was once known as Hollywood’s “it girl” after she landed the leading role in the hit 1992 film, and later an Academy Award nomination for 1996’s “Casino,” the actress said the projects that followed her stroke were nowhere near of the same magnitude as before.

In 2019, Stone said she “lost everything she had” following the health scare.

“I lost my place in the business,” she told Variety at the time. “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.”

“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.

After the stroke, Stone went on to star in films such as “Catwoman,” “Lovelace,” and “The Laundromat.”

She was not nominated for an Academy Award or a Golden Globe award since her health complications.

It comes as Stone recently opened up about what it was like losing custody of her oldest son at the same time she found global fame.

The actress was propelled to stardom after starring in the hit 1992 erotic thriller — but as she came to grips with newfound success, life behind closed doors was very different.

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“I lost custody of my child,” she said on the “Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi” podcast in March.

“When the judge asked my child – my tiny little boy, ‘Do you know your mother makes sex movies?’ This kind of abuse by the system, that it was considered what kind of parent I was because I made that movie.”

“People are walking around with no clothes on at all on regular TV now and you saw maybe like a sixteenth of a second of possible nudity of me – and I lost custody of my child,” she shared.