‘I have known death very closely’

Her basic instinct told her she was not alone.

Sharon Stone says she felt the presence of her deceased friends when she had a life-changing stroke in 2001.

The 65-year-old actress, who has been candid over the years about how the stroke affected her career, told Harper’s Bazaar Spain about how the medical scare altered her life.

“My stroke left me with an intense sense of peace. Today I can say that I have known death very closely,” she said.

“In those moments I felt that my deceased friends were coming to get me, and that removed all traces of fear. I lost my panic to try anything,” Stone continued. “When you experience something like this, you learn that nothing in life is really important and you understand that failure is just the beginning of success.”

The “Basic Instinct” star suffered a nine-day brain bleed, which resulted in a 1 percent chance of survival. She claimed last year that doctors thought she was “faking it” and nearly sent her home before reevaluating her and sending her into brain surgery.

The whole ordeal forced Stone to step away from acting for two years, but she quickly found out that it wasn’t easy getting back onto the silver screen.

“I recovered for seven years, and I haven’t had jobs since,” she said at The Hollywood Reporter’s Raising Our Voices event in June.

“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,” Stone stressed.

In 2019, she told Variety that she “lost everything she had” after the health scare.

“I lost my place in the business. I was like the hottest movie star, you know? It was like Miss Princess Diana and I were so famous — and she died and I had a stroke. And we were forgotten.”

“You find yourself at the back of the line in your business, as I did. You have to figure yourself out all over again,” she added.

After the stroke, Stone went on to star in films such as “Catwoman,” “Lovelace,” and “The Laundromat.”