Sharon Stone is opening up like never before in her new book, The Beauty of Living Twice. In the powerfully candid memoir, the 63-year-old actress recounts some very painful stories from both her personal and professional life.
Stone does not shy away from openly addressing the physically abuse she says she endured as a child, her medical issues and the harassment she faced in her decades-long career. In addition to talking about her stroke, Stone claims that a doctor performed a medical procedure on her without her knowledge. As for the iconic Basic Instinct scene, Stone shares why she felt misled when it came time to film the erotic moment. Stone also discusses being a mom to Roan, 20, Laird, 15, and Quinn, 14, and admits that temporarily losing custody of her oldest child left her broken.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest revelations that Stone shares about her life in The Beauty of Living Twice.
She allegedly suffered abuse as a child
From the time she began grade school to the time she was 14, Stone claims she was physically abused by her father, Joseph Stone, who died in 2009.
She alleges that her father would “yank me down with him or throw me down in front of him.” Other times, she claims, “I was dragged through the kitchen to the basement to get the crap strapped out of me with a belt.”
“It continued until I was so sure I didn’t do what I was being punished for that I lost all fear, all concern — in fact, all feeling. I simply saw my father as weak,” she writes. “He yelled for me at the bottom of the stairs to come down.”
“I walked up to him and said, ‘What’s the matter — do you need to hit me some more to feel like a man?’ I was 14. He started to cry. I told him I didn’t love him. That I had never loved him. That I would never love him. I was so cold, so still,” Stone continues. “He was so heartbroken. He never hit any one of us again. I was free. From them both. From then on, I was my own guide.”
Now, Stone writes that she has “respect” and “love” for her dad.
Reconciling with her mother
Stone also addressed issues she had with her mom growing up and says she eventually reconciled with her, writing that she had to “meet my mother as a person, separate from my childhood experiences and judgments of her, and know her from an adult perspective.”
“For now, I am able not only to receive love from my mother but to love my mother in return. I don’t need to know what she knew or blocked out to survive. I don’t need to forgive her, or save her, or help her heal, or get her to help me,” she writes. “I am grateful that we both made it here. I respect her for that. She respects me for that. We can look each other in the eye.”
“… Today, my mother and I are at the beginning of our relationship,” she adds. “Never have understood her and certainly never have had the opportunity for her to mother me now that I’ve entered my 60s and my mother is in her mid-80s.”
Despite her alleged experiences, Stone writes that she’s “not bitter.”
“I am unashamed, I am unblemished, I am pure in my heart and in my soul, I am not bitter, I am not sad, I have no need to be washed clean, I am not angry, I am not here to punish you,” she writes.
She received breast implants without her knowledge or consent
In the ’90s, Stone underwent a surgery to remove tumors from her breasts. That operation wound up requiring reconstructive surgery, but it didn’t turn out how she planned.
“I went to get reconstructive surgery, assuming I would wake up looking exactly as I had before this process. Instead, my plastic surgeon thought that I would look better with bigger, ‘better’ boobs,” she claims. “I left there bandaged, and when unbandaged, discovered that I had a full cup-size bigger breasts, ones that he said ‘go better with your hip size — I’m certain you look better now.'”
“He, in all of his self-determined knowledge, had changed my body without my knowledge or consent,” she alleges, adding that the doctor’s choice led to experiences that left her “humiliated.”
“I went to the underwear department and stood there looking for the most sympathetic-looking woman to tell her I didn’t know how to buy a bra and I didn’t know what size I wore and I didn’t know how to do this thing,” she writes. “And I still frankly don’t.”
After all of these years, Stone writes that she is still uncertain about a lot of things when it comes to the situation.
“I also don’t know if I should be angry at the now-dead plastic surgeon, whether I should get more reconstructive surgery to look like myself, or whether I should simply be happy I don’t have cancer,” she writes. “When I say to the press that I have my original breasts, what I mean is that I have my skin, my nipples, and my health. But still, at some point in all of this, I lost track of myself.”
