Sharon Stone is turning 66 in March but the Hollywood icon is not afraid of aging in an industry known for frowning upon older actors. Instead, the Basic Instinct star has revealed that she sees each year as a celebration that she is "alive and healthy", and considers it a moment to be grateful.
"I like being alive and healthy. And I think that we should all be super-thrilled to make it," Sharon told The Times in the UK. "Because I’ve witnessed any number of people not making it." "I think that people who are embarrassed about being older are just stupid and ungrateful," she continued.
But her decision to celebrate life hasn't come out of nowhere; at the age of 42 Sharon faced a near-death experience when a ruptured vertebral artery caused internal bleeding in her brain for nine days. She was given a 1 percent chance of survival – but she made it through, only to see her life change irrevocably, as her marriage broke down and professional opportunities appeared to dwindle.
"I lost everything," she told People magazine in October 2023 of those years, "I lost all those things that you feel are your real identity and your life."
"I never really got most of it back," she added, "but I’ve reached a point where I’m okay with it, where I really do recognize that I’m enough."
The mom-of-three also revealed in early 2023 that she had lost "half of my money" due to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Without going into details, the actor encouraged guests to text and donate money during the Women’s Cancer Research Fund’s (WCRF) An Unforgettable Evening fundraiser, before she admitted it can be "difficult" to use technology to send money.
"I know that thing that you have to get on and figure out how to text the money is difficult. I’m a technical idiot, but I can write a [expletive] check. And right now, that’s courage, too, because I know what’s happening," she said. "I just lost half my money to this banking thing, and that doesn’t mean that I’m not here."
Sharon is now working again — her new film What About Love is set for a February 2024 release – and she is also expanding her philanthropic ventures, with a seat on the board of the Barrow Neurological Foundation, an institution at the forefront of neurological research and treatment led by Dr. Michael Lawton, the surgeon credited with saving Sharon's life.