She Was Victim of Financial Abuse

After a string of hit films thrust her into superstardom, Sharon Stone disappeared from screens at the height of her fame.

A near-death experience, followed by a long recovery — all while becoming the victim of financial abuse — took a huge toll on the actress’s once flourishing career.

But the Oscar-nominated star held onto hope, and pushed through to continue an impressive career as an actress, activist, and painter.

Here’s how she’s doing today.

In the ’90s, it didn’t get much bigger than Sharon Stone. Starting with her breakthrough role in the Arnold Schwarzenegger-led sci-fi smash Total Recall in 1990, Sharon would go on to star in a number of memorable films of the decade, from 1992’s Basic Instinct to 1995’s Casino, the latter of which earned her an Academy Award nomination.

But everything changed after a near-fatal stroke in 2001, when a ruptured vertebral artery bled into Sharon’s brain for nine straight days. She was told she had a 1 percent chance to live.

“I had a death experience and then they brought me back,” she later reflected to The Hollywood Reporter in July 2024.

“I bled into my brain for nine days, so my brain was shoved to the front of my face,” she continued. “It wasn’t positioned in my head where it was before. And while that was happening, everything changed. My sense of smell, my sight, my touch. I couldn’t read for a couple of years. Things were stretched and I was seeing color patterns. A lot of people thought I was going to die.”

Sharon, who had just adopted her first of three children only months before her stroke, said she held on to her faith during a grueling seven-year recovery, which saw her absent from the big screen. During that time, she dealt with a divorce and lost custody of her son.

And as if things couldn’t get worse, she ended up going broke thanks to people who “took advantage of me over that time,” she said.

“I had $18 million saved because of all my success, but when I got back into my bank account, it was all gone,” she said in her Hollywood Reporter interview. “My refrigerator, my phone — everything was in other people’s names.”

Meanwhile, trying to get back into the acting game proved difficult, as Hollywood had seemingly moved on without her.

“In seven years, you’re no longer the flavor of the time,” she told Good Morning Britain in May 2004 (per Fox News). “You no longer have box-office heat, the same people you were working with are no longer in power anymore.”

“Everything changes and people don’t really care about that person anymore,” she added. “It’s like going back to your old job seven years later … you don’t just walk back into your job and think nothing’s changed.”

Still, Sharon has persevered, continuing her work as an actress as well as an activist (which began back in the ’90s with AIDs-related charity, even though she was told it could ruin her career thanks to the stigma at the time). And she has devoted her time to her abstract paintings, which have garnered critical acclaim.

Today, Sharon — who grew up in a Meadville, Pa. — has a reported net worth of $40 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. And she has certainly come a long way from those days in her small town.

“My dad made $14,000 a year and had four kids, and we were considered wealthy in our community because I had school shoes and play shoes,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.

“I grew up in a place with no stoplights,” she continued. “There were 87 people in my class. Kids drove their tractors to school after they did their chores. But you know what, I just found out that I’m French royalty. I just did that show on PBS, Finding Your Roots, and it turns out I’m related to Charlemagne. I am from a long line of royalty in France.”