Sharon Stone has claimed that she was dropped by Hollywood after suffering a stroke and near-fatal brain haemorrhage in 2001.
The 65-year-old was told by medics at the time that her “nine-day brain bleed” left her with just a “one percent chance” of survival.
The actress defied the odds and overcame her health battle but now claims that she struggled to find work for 20 years following her recovering.
While hosting The Hollywood Reporter’s Raising Our Voices luncheon on Thursday, she shared: “I recovered for seven years, and I haven’t had jobs since.
“When it first happened, I didn’t want to tell anybody because you know if something goes wrong with you, you’re out.
“Something went wrong with me – I’ve been out for 20 years. I haven’t had jobs. I was a very big movie star at one point in my life.”
The Basic Instinct star then explained how standing up for herself has been to her professional determent, but urged others to demand their place within the industry.
The mother-of-three continued: “I broke a lot of glass ceilings on the top of my head. I want to tell you that it hurt. It hurt to get paid. It hurt to fight the studio heads.
“It hurt to make boundaries – boundaries about who could come in my trailer and what they could ask for; boundaries about the fact that I didn’t want to sign my contract in my makeup trailer on the day that I started a show,” she added.
“It hurt to say that I had, like any corporation, the opportunity to have my lawyer read my contract and that I didn’t have to start the show signing my unread contract in the makeup trailer.”
Stone went on: “It is important to me that your diversity does not get wiped out by this anti-woke bulls**t idea in our country.
“This democratic experiment means a lot. It means a lot. The extreme pushing of a controlled government society – whatever you want to call it, whatever people want to label it – is also an experiment.
“It doesn’t mean that it is happening. It means that it is an experiment to see if you will eat it. Will you eat a controlled government? Will you eat a controlled studio system? What will you eat – or will you stand up and be counted?”
Stone swapped the runway for screen and was catapulted into the spotlight starring in iconic 90s films, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, The Quick And The Dead, Sphere and Casino, which resulted in a Best Actress Oscar nomination.
