Throughout the 1990s, Sharon Stone established herself as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood with acclaimed performances in films like Basic Instinct and Casino.
But seemingly all of a sudden, Stone disappeared from Hollywood and wasn’t landing the same roles she used to.
Now, the 65-year-old actress is opening up about how Hollywood turned its back on her after she had a health crisis.
After a breakthrough role in Stone became a Hollywood A-lister overnight thanks to the hit 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct. Stone received acclaim for her performance, and was nominated for a Golden Globe.
Starring roles followed, and Stone was sharing top billing with Hollywood’s biggest stars and working with some of the biggest directors. She starred opposite Sylvester Stallone in The Specialist, starred in Sam Raimi’s 1995 western The Quick and the Dead, and received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in Martin Scorsese’s Casino.
While she received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in The Mighty, some of her later film choices were critically panned — and a health crisis proved to be a fatal blow to her once-thriving career.
In 2001, she was hospitalized for a subarachnoid hemorrhage, leading her to take a two-year hiatus from Hollywood to recover.
In a recent interview, Stone, now 65, says Hollywood never let her back into the A-list after the stroke. “I recovered for seven years, and I haven’t had jobs since,” she said at The Hollywood Reporter’s Raising Our Voices event on 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,” she added.
While Stone has continued to appear on screen, her career has been a far cry from the days of Basic Instinct and Casino. She won an Emmy for her comeback guest starring role in The Practice, and earned positive reviews for independent and ensemble film productions, but also starred in critically panned flops Catwoman and Basic Instinct 2.
Stone previously spoke about the professional cost of her stroke, telling USA Today in 2019 that she “lost everything she had.”
“I lost my place in the business. I was like the hottest movie star, you know?” she told the outlet. “It was like Miss Princess Diana and I were so famous – and she died and I had a stroke. And we were forgotten.”
In March, Stone also made another heartbreaking personal revelation: she said she lost custody of her oldest child after a judge objected to the sexual content in Basic Instinct.
“When the judge asked my child – my tiny little boy, ‘Do you know your mother makes sex movies?’” Stone said on the Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi podcast. “This kind of abuse by the system, that it was considered what kind of parent I was because I made that movie.”
Despite “losing her place” in Hollywood, Stone continues to work: in recent years she has collaborated with major directors like Martin Scorsese and Steven Soderbergh, and co-starred in Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Ratched.
And Stone’s most famous performances in Basic Instinct and Casino continue to be widely respected by critics, so even though she was “forgotten” by Hollywood she will still be remembered as one of the biggest stars of the 90s.
It’s heartbreaking to hear all the struggles Sharon Stone went through that took such a toll on her thriving career, but we’re glad to see she’s still going strong and wish her the best!
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