As a Child, Sharon Stone Was Forced to Watch Her Grandfather Sexually Abuse Her Sister | "I Would Have Loved to Stab Him to Death”

Editor's note: This article was originally published on November 11, 2022. It has since been updated.

Sharon Stone may be known as one of the most popular sex symbols from the 90s, but not many people will know the star had heartbreaking moments in her life. The actress recently opened up about the sexual abuse she and her sister suffered from their grandfather when they were younger. The 63-year-old actress discussed her memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, with The New York Times where she recalled one horrifying incident where she and her sister, Kelly, were sexually abused. As adults, they "made this decision together" to reveal the abuse in Stone's memoir.

The Sliver actress told the outlet, "We spoke to my mother and at first she was very stoic and wrote me a letter about how disconcerting all this information was. The whole pious, horrified, I-don't-really-want-to-talk-about-it-directly kind of thing. Then my sister got loaded when my mom was staying with her and really went for it with my mom," Stone continued. "And my mom had a major breakthrough. When I finished the book, I read it to my mother over a three-day period. And I had the flu at the time. I was in bed and she got in bed with me as I finished the book, and then I recorded an hour and a half of her talking," she added. "And then I rewrote a lot of the book. That's when I dedicated the book to her."

According to Los Angeles Magazine, Stone recalls the horrifying incident in a chapter where she shared how her grandmother forced her to watch her grandfather molest her five-year-old sister. Stone was only 8 years old at the time. When she attended her grandfather's funeral later she wrote that “it’s a very weird thing when you’re a kid and the first experience you have of death is glee and relief. And emptiness.” Stone then went on to say how she tapped into the anger she felt toward her grandfather to play serial killer Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct. “To know that I was so angry that I would have loved to stab [my grandfather] to death,” she wrote, “was incredibly freeing.” Stone also had other heartbreaks where she had to cross state lines to get a secret abortion at age 17. As she got older she also suffered three miscarriages — each after five months of pregnancy.

While speaking with the Times she was asked what people would think of her after reading in-depth details of her personal life in her memoir. She responded that "people will make it all up for you" if she didn't share these details herself. "There's been pretty much an adult lifetime of people making up my life for me," she pointed out. "I've had quite a bit of tummy trouble waiting for this book to come. Now I'm going to go out in the most menacing, disruptive, psychologically aggressive period that our world has been in since the '60s and be vulnerable and open," Stone continued. "I understand that I'll be met with a certain amount of that. But I don't want to gird my loins. I don't want to be defensive. I want to prepare to be open and present. Because that's the purpose of my journey."

In a taped interview for Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul talk show Stone elaborated more on her memoir adding that as women reach the age of 40, "white male society starts to tell women you don't have worth." According to PEOPLE, she shared, "I think that as we grow older, we have this societal pressure where people start to try to tell us that our worth is diminished." "I think this is a time in our life when our worth is the most enhanced," she told Winfrey. "I believe that's because it's the first time in your life when your worth becomes so much more. You become the most powerful than you've ever been."

References:

https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/sharon-stone-memoir/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/books/sharon-stone-beauty-of-living-twice.html

https://people.com/movies/sharon-stone-tells-oprah-winfrey-why-shes-releasing-her-memoir-now/

Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer