Sharon Stone Says Only Her Dad Came to Her Aid After She Nearly Died: ‘Don’t Come to Hollywood’ (Exclusive)

Sharon Stone says that only her father stood by her during one of the darkest periods of her life.

In 2001, the actress was given a 1 percent chance of survival after a ruptured vertebral artery left her brain bleeding for nine days.

“My father was there for me, but I would say that was all,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, looking back on that period. “I understand if you want to live with solid citizens, don’t come to Hollywood.”

Before her health incident, Stone, 65, was thriving both professionally and personally. She received her first Oscar nomination casino five years before. And months before that, she adopted a son, Roan, now 23, with her husband, newspaper editor Phil Bronstein. (She has since adopted two more children: sons Laird, 18, and Quinn, 17.)

But after the incident, her marriage fell apart (she and Bronstein divorced in 2004) and, she says, Hollywood stopped calling.

“I lost everything,” she says. “I lost all my money. I lost custody of my child. I lost my career. I lost all those things that you think are your true identity and your life.”

“I’ve never really gotten much of it,” she adds, “but I’ve gotten to a point where it doesn’t bother me, where I really recognize that I’m enough.”

Sharon Stone and her son Roan Joseph Bronstein.

JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty

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Today, he is on the board of directors of the Barrow Neurological Foundation, which supports Stone Medical Institute brain surgeon Dr. Michael Lawton in Arizona, and hosts the annual Neuro Night fundraiser on October 27. On its website, the Foundation’s mission is “to save human lives through innovative treatment, groundbreaking, curative research and the education of the next generation of the world’s leading neuroclinicians.”

“She’s an inspiration to those who suffer from anything neurological,” says Lawton, whom Stone credits with saving her life.

She also keeps busy painting and playing pileball – two passions she once thought possible. Pickleball is “so much fun,” Stone says, while painting, she says, “helped me find my pure center.”

For more on Stone, pick up this week’s issue PEOPLEon newsstands on Friday.

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Source: HIS Education