Sharon Stone has finished smoking weed.
Her journey away from cannabis began in 2001 when she suffered a near-fatal stroke and was put on several medications.
“I stopped one of the medications I was taking for a stroke last September, and I was told I couldn’t come off the medication,” Stone told me. “They said, ‘You can’t get out of it. You’ll never get out of it.’ I was like, ‘Let’s just quit,’ and it felt like coming off heroin. I was sick as a dog for four and a half months. I just thought, “I want my life back.” I had come off most of the medications I had been given over the years. But I thought, “I want to live a drug-free life.” ”
“Once I stopped doing that, I decided I was going to stop smoking weed. And I think there’s a lot of stuff put into cannabis now, so it really is. Once I stopped smoking weed, I got sick too. I couldn’t pull weed out of the ground anymore.” It’s not like it was when we were kids. I went to the neurologist and he said, “Sharon, I’ve had people die in the emergency room.” ”
On a Monday afternoon, Stone is sitting by the pool at her Beverly Hills mansion. Just a few minutes ago, I watched her paint on a large canvas in a guesthouse she had converted into an art studio. At the same time, photographer Tyler Chick is photographing her for the digital magazine “Nineteen92”. The day was also recorded by a group of young people from Social Network Studio, a social media management and branding company founded by Stone’s eldest son, Roan, who runs Stone’s social media.
“We had 4-5 million followers[on Instagram]but we didn’t have a lot of engagement,” Stone said. Roan overhauled her feed. “We now have millions of engagements.”
But it also meant Roan had to change who he followed. “People wrote me nasty letters. Why don’t I follow them anymore?” Stone says. “People were furious that I wasn’t being followed anymore, as if this was a real relationship. As if I had a personal relationship with someone I follow on Instagram, someone I’ve never met.”
Although Stone’s painting career has really taken off in the last few years, this art form is not new to her. The Pennsylvania native studied fine arts in college before dropping out to pursue a career in modeling. “I went to New York with $50 and a suitcase,” she says.
The creative fire was reignited during the coronavirus lockdown. What started out as a few canvases and paints in my bedroom turned into an obsession, sometimes 24/7. Before she knew it, Stone had turned her bedroom into a makeshift art studio. “We moved all the furniture out of the bedroom. Eventually, we got rid of the bedroom furniture and got a small bed,” Stone recalled. “I lived in a kind of French artist’s loft, with a bed in front of the fireplace. I had a beautiful bedroom, but I drove nails into the wall like I wasn’t living in this fancy house. I just drove nails into this beautiful wall. I started buying bigger canvases. I brought a big table there and put sheets on the floor. Months and months went by.”
Stone paints in her studio.
alexander moura
Her sons, Lorne and his brothers, Laird and Quinn, were concerned and intervened. “They come in and say, ‘Mom, we just think you should wear a bra,'” Stone says. “I’m like, ‘This is the same conversation my dad had with me in the ’70s.'” It didn’t work out that time. I can’t work now. Thank you for your concern. Have a wonderful day! ”
They were able to persuade Ms. Stone to move her painting to the guesthouse. “I now sell my work in galleries all over the world,” she says.
Stone poses for photographer Tyler Chick and creative director Andrew Matarazzo.
alexander moura
She returned to modeling in June, walking the runway for the first time in 33 years as the closing model for the Vetements menswear show in Paris. “I’m so glad I met the designer[Gram Gvasalia]because he’s so talented, he has such smart ideas, and he does things that are, to me, very punk,” Stone says. “And, you know, I really like punk because I was actually into punk. I really identify with punk.”
She also couldn’t help but reminisce about her early days modeling in Europe. “When I was 19, I had a 38-year-old boyfriend who was a designer for Silk Designers. He knew all the designers,” Stone recalls. “We traveled the world together. We dated on and off for 30 years. We’re still best friends.”
Was marriage ever considered? “He was going to marry me, but I didn’t want to live in Europe,” Stone explains. “I knew I was going to be an actress. I knew what my destiny was. From a young age, I really knew this was what was going to happen to me. It wasn’t all about acting. I knew I was going to be super famous, and I knew I had a lot of work to do. That’s all I knew.”
In the past year or so, Stone has stepped in front of the camera with roles in Euphoria, the action comedy Nobody 2, and the indie drama In Memoriam.
Stone hopes to make her Broadway debut in the future. She said she tried to secure the stage rights to “All About Eve.” “I could be a good Margo Channing,” she says of the role of the aging Broadway star played by Bette Davis in the 1950 film. “I mean, in your sleep. Let’s go. Come on. When she goes, she says, ‘I hate men.’
Outtakes from Stone’s Nineteen92 shoot by Alexander Moura.
Stone said she had been offered Broadway roles, but none of them felt right. She also revealed to me that she had recently pitched the idea to an agent. “I thought, ‘Why don’t we take Mame and reset it to the punk era?’ she says. “I could work in a department store in New York, have a biracial child, and be a bean from the punk era. That kid could have a mohawk. I could have bleached my blonde hair. I could have Debbie Harry do music, I could have Billy Idol.”
Another idea is to swap the genders of the Tony Award-winning musical “La Cage aux Folles.” A musical about a gay couple who run a drag club and decide to retreat into the closet for one night when the son of one of the men brings his future conservative in-laws over for dinner. “‘La Cage,’ with two lesbians,” Stone says. “I play a lipstick lesbian and you find a big butch lesbian who has to femme it up.”
But she added with a laugh: “When I tell people these ideas, they look at me and are like, ‘What are you thinking?’
But as we now know, Stone hasn’t been taking much of anything lately. In fact, she says: “This past year has been a period of really getting my life back together for me.”
