"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." Sharon Stone said.
Well-known for her acting caliber, Sharon Stone, recalled how she stopped getting acting work after she suffered a stroke and brain hemorrhage in 2001, per PEOPLE. The 65-year-old actress, who hosted The Hollywood Reporter’s 'Raising Our Voices luncheon gala' on Wednesday, May 31, discussed the impact her health journey had on her Hollywood career. "I had a stroke in 2001, I had a 1 percent chance of survival, I had a 9-day brain bleed," she said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I recovered for 7 years, and I haven’t had jobs since," Stone added.
She further revealed, “When it first happened, I didn’t want to tell anybody because you know if something goes wrong with you, you’re out." She continued, "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.”
Sharon Stone says Hollywood ignored her for 20 years after stroke: ‘I was a very big movie star’. https://t.co/8duzYkgUKq
— ExtensiveOpinion (@extnsv_opinion) June 2, 2023
Stone previously revealed how she was told that turning forty was the end of her fame and career. When Stone was 43, everything in her life abruptly changed. She was already beyond Hollywood's "sell-by date" of 40 in the early 2000s, and the celebrity that Basic Instinct had helped establish was gradually waning. After that, she had a potentially fatal stroke and brain hemorrhage, which she concealed as she recovered for years to finally resume her profession.
Stone is now 65 years old and is thinking about her future while focusing on ageism in acting. The actor revealed that suddenly she was told that she was “too old” to act as per Spectrum News 1. “I can name the actors," she said. Talking about her age she said, "[At 40,] you’re old enough to know what you want and young enough to go get it. And you look amazing!” adding, “I looked amazing! I looked like some Scandinavian princess!"
"I look at pictures of myself and think, ‘That was old?’ Oh my god,’” she told the interviewer, Giselle Fernandez, about her experience in the showbiz industry and how often she came across ageist notions.
As she recovered from her stroke, Stone vanished from the movie industry and battled with marital and family issues on a personal level, as she describes in her memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice. Since then, she has secured sporadic minor TV appearances, and when the world was in lockdown due to the epidemic, she found a new method to express her creativity by returning to her first love of painting. She spent a lot of time working with paint and canvas and just had her first solo art exhibition at the Allouche Gallery in Los Angeles.
“I never really thought I was going to be painting in my life. If I didn’t have painting, I don’t know how I would stay standing,” she told Fernandez. Stone staged her first art exhibition earlier this year, displaying works that were influenced by both the beauty and the challenges of life. Now in her 60s, Stone says she will keep working and producing because she is proud of her life.
“I am going to get up and work. If it’s not for Hollywood, it’s going to be for somebody else because I’m a worker. I come from blue-collar blood, baby,” she told the outlet as she looks forward to work as long as she wishes by replying to the absurd questions with her befitting actions.
References:
https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/la-stories/2023/04/09/actor-sharon-stone-la-stories#
https://people.com/sharon-stone-stopped-getting-jobs-after-her-stroke-7507027
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Jon Kopaloff
