Sharon Stone has opened up about her near-death experience and recalled leaving her physical body and being able to communicate with the dead.
The actress, 63, suffered a near-fatal brain haemorrhage and stroke in 2001 and was given just a one per cent chance of survival at the time.
Sharon, who has since made a remarkable recovery, spoke on Thursday’s episode of Good Morning Britain about the out of body experience she had while in hospital.
Candid: Sharon Stone has opened up about her near-death experience and recalled leaving her physical body and being able to communicate with the dead
She told hosts Susanna Reid and Adil Ray: ‘I had a near death experience and people discuss these in many ways. People discuss them from a scientific perspective and discuss them also from a spiritual perspective, I believe they’re both.
‘In my case, when this happened to me I had all these things people talk about where you see this kind of light – that you leave your body, that you have this feeling of being pulled outward and upward.
‘I had a sense of seeing people that had gone before me, I had a sense of communicating with them and sort of an ephemeral sense – not really with dialogue per se – but I did have a sense of understanding that we were communicating and then suddenly I had this gigantic pain like I’d been kicked in the chest.
Worrying times: The actress, 63, suffered a near-fatal brain haemorrhage and stroke in 2001 and was given just a one per cent chance of survival at the time
‘Now I do not know if I was defibrillated or if this is just how it happened with me, but then I was back in the room. And it was very clear that I had chosen to be back in the room and not chosen to continue on that journey… I think that’s really all I can say to describe it.’
Sharon, best known for her role in Basic Instinct, went on to reveal how she sacked her doctor just before undergoing brain surgery, because she felt he was more interested in publicity than treating her.
She recalled: ‘I was on very, very heavy medication… a synthetic heroin and I was having that intravenously 24 hours a day. I woke up on a gurney, being wheeled to what the orderly told me was going to be explorative brain surgery.
Rise to fame: Sharon is best known for her role in Basic Instinct (1992)
Telling her story: Sharon, who has since made a remarkable recovery, spoke on Thursday’s episode of Good Morning Britain about the out of body experience she had while in hospital
‘And I asked them to stop for a second and just let me know what the heck kind of exploratory brain surgery was going to entail and he said there wasn’t time, we would lose the room, and I really felt that maybe a bit of explanation about brain surgery might be in order.
She continued: ‘So I asked him to stop and he wouldn’t. So whilst I was bleeding on my brain, I had to stand up on my moving gurney to cause him to stop and when I did, the doctor broke away from his publicity phone calls about me and came running down the hallway with a piece of paper that he was waving in the air, and he told me to sit down and do what I was told.
‘He screamed with the paper that he had a fax from People magazine.
She told hosts Susanna Reid and Adil Ray: ‘I had a near death experience and people discuss these in many ways (pictured in 1990)
‘And I just realised that I was going to have to fire him, because he was more interested in his fax from People magazine than he was in explaining brain surgery to his patient.’
Shortly after her recovery, Sharon attended the 2002 Oscars and danced on stage with John Travolta – who she called the ‘most remarkably wonderful human being.’
Sharon said she hadn’t told John about her stroke, but admitted that had a ‘special kind of communication where you just know if you need to give each other a call.’
She said: ‘People discuss them from a scientific perspective and discuss them also from a spiritual perspective, I believe they’re both’
She explained: ‘We came to rehearsal the day before and I asked him what he wanted to do – did he want to dance, did he want to do something special – he said he didn’t know.
‘And then that night he came and I was sitting on a steamer trunk backstage and he looked at my dress and he said, “Oh, that’s a good dancing dress! That dress really twirls… Show me, show me how it twirls.”
‘He didn’t tell me that we were going to do anything and so I was as surprised as everyone else when I came out and we started dancing.’
‘But it was so exciting for me, because I was still really, deeply in my recovery and I was just at the stage where I’d just put one foot in front of the other. I was still working through a lot of stuff and my hearing still wasn’t quite right.
‘And sometimes I could see out of my right eye and sometimes I couldn’t. It was one of those things where I never knew quite what was going to happen and it all worked out. It was a good day and I didn’t fall off the stage or anything!’
Sharon, who was promoting her new autobiography The Beauty of Living Twice, also discussed her opinion on the #metoo movement.
Sharon said: ‘First of all, I don’t think the #metoo movement is a Hollywood issue. I don’t think sexual abuse is a Hollywood issue, I think it begins in homes both rich and poor.
‘I think the lack of communication is certainly a global one. I think rape kits need to be processed, I think that elementary schools, nursery schools need to have places where kids can say how they feel, what’s going on and educated people need to be installed in all schools.
‘I think we need to have better communication in courtrooms about how we treat victims of these kinds of crimes. I feel that we need to understand the differences between felonies and misdemeanors.
‘I believe that think tanks need to be made so we have a better understanding of what all of this means. And that we can address it more fruitfully, more thoughtfully and more compassionately in the legal system. I think that we are just impoverished in our understanding of how to address these issues.’