Sharon Stone continues to choose to be happy 24 years after a near-fatal brain bleed that changed the course of her life forever.
Prior to presenting the best foreign film award at the 2025 Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, on Sunday night, Stone told Fox News Digital that she believes people have a choice about how they view the world.
“I think that you get to choose how you view the world, and I choose to be happy, which I think is a discipline. And so that’s what I do,” Stone said.
The iconic actress, who rose to fame in the 1990s with breakthrough roles in “Basic Instinct” and “Casino,” spoke to BBC News in December about the advice she would give her younger self.
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“You’re going to make it,” Stone told the outlet while crying. “You don’t know it, but you’re going to make it. I would have it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids. I would have wanted to have known it so many times.”
She continued, “When I was on the floor and couldn’t get an ambulance. When I went home [from the hospital] and I read in People magazine that we wouldn’t know for 30 days if I was going to live or die.”
After her brain hemorrhage in 2001, Stone told the outlet that she became “a very different person.” She explained that even her taste in food changed.
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Through it all, Stone chose to be resilient.
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“We can choose to b—h and moan, or we can choose joy. I think you have to just keep choosing joy,” Stone told BBC News. “Stay present. You fell down. Get up. Someone pushed you down. Now they want to help you up. Let them.”
In May, Stone appeared on U.K.’s “Good Morning Britain” and spoke about how her career significantly pivoted from acting to activism after suffering a “near-death experience.”
“I went to the first hospital and had an MRI and had this near-death experience and then was transferred to a specialized hospital. I continued to bleed into my brain for nine days before my best friend convinced [the doctors] to look again,” she said at the time. “Thank God they did, because they realized what was going on and how it had happened and were able to repair it at the last moment.”
“It was really one of those beautiful miracles,” she added. “Of course, I’m a different person. I have an invisible disability. People can help you when they see you are walking with crutches, but when you are having a bit of a problem with brain function, people don’t know that you need help with that.”
The actress, who has spent more than 20 years as an activist for the World Health Organization, said her first step of recovery lasted about “seven years.”
“That’s a long time to lose your momentum,” she said.
“In seven years, you’re no longer the flavor of the time, you no longer have box-office heat, the same people you were working with are no longer in power anymore,” she added. “Everything changes and people don’t really care about that person anymore. 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.”
“I was sort of hurt that the world moved on without me,” she admitted. “But I’ve kind of gotten over it now.”
In 2023, Stone spoke further about how her medical scare significantly impacted her career.
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“I had a 1% chance of survival. I had a nine-day brain bleed. I recovered for seven years and I haven’t had jobs since,” she said during the “Raising Our Voices” luncheon in June 2023. “My contract changed. I have a maximum of a 14-hour day. 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,” she declared.
“I haven’t had jobs. I was a very big movie star at one point in my life. I broke a lot of glass ceilings with the top of my head,” she admitted.
“I would have loved to be heard, but since I wasn’t, I decided to work so that you could be heard,” she continued. “I have spent the last 20 years plus working for the World Health Organization, working for the United Nations, working for governments all over the world so that you can be heard. It is important to me that your diversity does not get wiped out by this anti-woke bulls— idea in our country.”
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Speaking to Willie Geist on “Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist” in 2021, Stone, who is now a dedicated artist and painter, said she has found peace with her life now.
“I’m in a really grateful place,” she said. “When I was a kid, I always wanted to have a house full of kids running and screaming and dogs, and I got it. And I feel very blessed and happy about the life I got. We’re happy together, and what’s better than that?”
“There’s nothing more free than standing centered in yourself,” Stone added. “I tell my friends that my new mantra is: ‘It’s never too late to become yourself.’”
Fox News Digital’s Christina Dugan Ramirez contributed to this report.
