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Donna Freydkin has spent 10-plus years interviewing celebrities for major publications, and has written for a variety of outlets such as USA Today, Allure, Yahoo! and CNN covering topics such as films, family and favorite meals.
Sharon Stone, 68, Lost Everything After Her Stroke. Painting Brought Her Back
She lost her memory, mobility and career after a massive stroke in 2001. She found her way back with a paintbrush —and she’s not done yet
In a recent interview on “Today,” Sharon Stone talks about how painting helped her process her stroke. Here, Stone appears at AARP The Magazine’s Movies For Grownups Awards in January 2026 in Beverly Hills.
Robin L Marshall/Getty Images
Key Takeaways
- Painting helped Stone process her stroke, trauma and loss of identity after her career stopped.
- The 2001 brain bleed erased her abilities and industry standing. Her recovery took years.
- With her children grown, Stone is acting again and setting her sights on Broadway.
One day Sharon Stone was one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. And the next she couldn’t walk, talk or remember her own life. In a Today interview that aired April 1, the actor, 68, opened up about what it actually took to survive her stroke — and what finally helped her process it all.
The answer was a paintbrush.
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Sharon Stone at the Deschler Gallery in Berlin in February 2024, where her paintings were on display.
Monika Skolimowska/Getty Images
“I started painting when I was little,” Stone told Today. “In the ’90s I was pretty busy being a movie star. I stopped painting almost entirely. Then COVID happened and I had all that free time. I decided to pick up the brush again. It was a really wonderful time. It allowed me to process the impact of what had happened to me — not only having the stroke but then not being able to go back to work.”
Her aunt had taught her to paint as a child, she said on the show. She filed it away for decades. It took a pandemic and the long shadow of a near-fatal brain bleed to bring it back.
Sharon Stone as a Hollywood showrunner in the third season of HBO’s “Euphoria.”
Courtesy HBO
“I had lost my memory. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t see straight. It took me a long time to regain myself. I lost my box office viability,” she said on Today.
Now she showcases some of her works on Instagram.
Her stroke happened in September 2001, at the peak of what had been a meteoric rise — much of it due to her breakout turn in 1992’s Basic Instinct. Her performance as Catherine Tramell earned her a Golden Globe nomination for best actress and made her one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. Casino followed in 1995, earning her both a Golden Globe win and an Academy Award nomination for best actress.
Sharon Stone in 1992’s “Basic Instinct,” which made her one of the biggest movie stars in the world.
TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Stone and her then-husband, Phil Bronstein, adopted a son named Roan in 2000, just months before the stroke. The brain hemorrhage came 15 months after Roan was born. Stone spent eight months in bed, and recovery took seven years. “I came out of the hospital with short- and long-term memory loss,” she told AARP in 2012. “My lower left leg was numb. I couldn’t hear out of my right ear. The side of my face was falling down. I thought, I’ll never be pretty again. Who’s going to want to be around me?”
Bronstein filed for divorce in 2003. A San Francisco judge awarded him primary physical custody of Roan in 2008. Providing an explanation for how she lost custody of her son, Stone told AARP, “I had had a brain hemorrhage and was an actress who had made sexy movies.” On her own, she adopted Laird in 2005 and Quinn in 2006 and raised all three boys as a single mother.
Sharon Stone in her 1995 Western “The Quick and the Dead,” one of a string of film roles she landed in the years before her 2001 stroke.
TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
The boys are grown now. Roan is 25, Laird is 20 and Quinn is 19.
With her sons launched, Stone is back — on her own terms. She plays a showrunner in the third season of HBO’s Euphoria, premiering April 12, with Lexi (Maude Apatow) working as her assistant.
And she has theater squarely in her sights as her next challenge.
Sharon Stone with her three sons, Roan, Quinn and Laird, at the Los Angeles premiere of “Nobody 2” in August 2025.
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images
“I think I’d very much like to do Broadway,” she told Today. “I’d like to bring a little glamour back.”
The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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