Hollywood actress opens about being abused by a family member and near-fatal stroke
Actress Sharon Stone is baring her soul and revealing some of her life’s most jarring moments in upcoming memoir ‘The Beauty of Living Twice’, releasing on March 30. The 63-year-old star opens up about being abused as a child, filming that iconic scene from ‘Basic Instinct’ and suffering a near-fatal stroke. Here are some of the most shocking revelations that have been making rounds through excerpts released so far…
One of Stone’s most famous roles was that of the villainous Catherine Tramell in 1992 thriller ‘Basic Instinct’. In an excerpt published in Vanity Fair, she said that filming for the movie was a traumatic experience. “The role was by far the most stretching that I had ever done in terms of considering the dark side of myself,” she said. “It was terrifying. I had walked in my sleep three times during production, twice waking fully dressed in my car in my garage. I had hideous nightmares.”
The actress also said that the explicit scene in the movie was filmed without her full knowledge. When she found out about how much of her private parts would be exposed, she slapped her director Paul Verhoeven. “I went to the projection booth, slapped Paul across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer, Marty Singer,” Stone wrote. “Marty told me that they could not release this film as it was. That I could get an injunction.” However, she didn’t pursue an injunction on the
Stone, who is a single parent to three adopted children, recounted other sexist experiences she faced during her career. In an incident unrelated to ‘Basic Instinct’, she said she was told by a producer to sleep with a co-star “so that we could have on-screen chemistry.” “I felt they could have just hired a co-star with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines. I also felt they could [sleep with] him themselves and leave me out of it. It was my job to act and I said so,” she wrote.
For the first time, the actress has revealed that she and her sister Kelly were repeatedly sexually abused by their grandfather Clarence Lawson. Stone recalled that their grandmother would lock them in a room with Lawson to aid the abuse. She said in her book that it only ended with his death when she was 14. Writing about his funeral, she said: “I poked him, and the bizarre satisfaction that he was at last dead hit me like a ton of ice. I looked at [Kelly] and she understood; she was 11, and it was over.”
The ‘Casino’ actress suffered a massive stroke and brain haemorrhage in 2001. In her book, Stone said she had an out-of-body experience while in the ER. She said three friends who had passed away appeared to her and told her not to be scared. “The light was so luminous,” she wrote, according to New York Post. “It was so … mystical. I wanted to know it. I wanted to immerse myself.” However, in a moment she felt “like I had been kicked in the middle of my chest by a mule,” and she “made a choice to survive.”
Following a seven-hour surgery and the recovery process, Stone wrote that she became sort of a “hippie” and converted to Buddhism. “It’s amazing how much one learns when one has to,” she wrote. “I became ‘Miss Peace and [expletive] Quiet,’ a title that I prize much higher than a Miss Crawford County pageant title.”
Following a seven-hour surgery and the recovery process, Stone wrote that she became sort of a “hippie” and converted to Buddhism. “It’s amazing how much one learns when one has to,” she wrote. “I became ‘Miss Peace and [expletive] Quiet,’ a title that I prize much higher than a Miss Crawford County pageant title.”
