Sharon Stone opens up on health struggles 25 years after stroke and brain hemorrhage
Sharon Stone opens up on health struggles 25 years after stroke and brain hemorrhage
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Megan Bull, Julianna Salinas Sun, November 1, 2026 at 12:39 AM UTC
The actress had a brain bleed for nine days (Image: Getty)
Sharon Stone recently opened up about her ongoing health struggles.
The 68-year-old Hollywood actress continues to experience "seizures and migraines," a quarter-century after suffering a stroke. Stone, renowned for her roles in Casino and Basic Instinct, was admitted to hospital in 2001 following a ruptured vertebral artery that caused a stroke.
"I bled in my brain for nine days. I spent two years learning to walk and talk again," the Hollywood star previously shared with The Hollywood Reporter before providing an update on her condition in a new interview.
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"I came home from that stroke stuttering, and couldn't read for two years. I was in an ICU for nine days, and the survival rate for what I went through is very low," she previously stated.
Now, in an interview with ELLE Spain, the actress provided an update on her condition.
Sharon Stone had to learn to walk and talk again after she was treated for a brain bleed (Image: Getty)
She told the publication, "Against all odds, I managed to recover, but the job offers dried up. Back then, if you were a woman and something happened to you, you were finished. I did everything I was allowed to do, as if I were doing penance for getting sick.
Since suffering a ruptured aneurysm, I've had seizures and migraines. Stress makes them worse, so I have to take care of myself. People are unaware of, or tend to forget, invisible disabilities."
The Oscar nominee continued, "I don't need someone to make me feel bad about growing older. I'll tell you what makes you feel bad: when you think you might not."
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Sharon Stone is known for performances in films like Casino and Basic Instinct (Image: Getty)
Stone concluded, "So I feel really good about talking and having my full vocabulary."
It's been a humbling journey: I was on Law & Order (which is not what I'd hoped for; you get sent all the way to the back of the line to guest star on Law & Order), and I had a hard time with my lines. I can talk about it now because I'm ok now."
In a separate interview with Vogue, Sharon described the incident, recalling a "lightning bolt-like" pain in her head. "I remember waking up on a gurney and asking the kid wheeling it where I was going, and him saying, 'brain surgery,'" she said.
"A doctor had decided, without my knowledge or consent, that he should give me exploratory brain surgery and sent me off to the operating room," the actress revealed.
She continued, "What I learned through that experience is that in a medical setting, women often just aren't heard, particularly when you don't have a female doctor."
Disclosing that medical staff believed she was "faking it" after they failed to detect the brain hemorrhage in an angiogram, Sharon attributed her survival to a close friend who advocated on her behalf, reports the Express.
"My best friend talked them into giving me a second one, and they discovered that I had been hemorrhaging into my brain, my whole subarachnoid pool, and that my vertebral artery was ruptured," she explained.
"I would have died if they had sent me home."
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
