'I feel really, really happy. I've never been this joyful.'
Sharon Stone, a Hollywood icon, recently shared her thoughts on aging in an interview with Vogue Arabia. While cosmetic enhancements are common in Hollywood, 64-year-old Stone has chosen to embrace her natural self, resisting societal pressure to conform to certain beauty standards. Stone shared that a past relationship ended after she declined to get Botox. The younger man she was dating asked if she used it, to which she quipped, "It would probably be really good for your ego and mine if I did." Their relationship ended after this incident. Stone disclosed that she saw him just one more time after this and he wasn't interested in seeing her anymore. “If you don’t see me for more than that, you’ll please find your way to the exit,” Stone shared.
The actor shares that she feels like "this is the most exciting and creative period of my life." Though Stone has previously undergone aesthetic procedures, she stopped after suffering a stroke and a nine-day brain hemorrhage in 2001. "I was in an ICU for nine days and the survival rate for what I went through is very low. I don't need someone to make me feel bad about growing older," she said in a 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“There were periods in the super fame when I got Botox and filler and stuff, and then I had this massive stroke and a nine-day brain hemorrhage and I had to have over 300 shots of Botox and filler to make the one side of my face come up again,” she said. The hospitalization and stroke changed the way the actor looks at cosmetic surgery, and the Botox became something from a “cute luxury to some kind of massive, painful neurological need” in her eyes. Stone said, "I feel really, really happy. I've never been this joyful."
I had a fascinating conversation with the iconic @sharonstone for @VogueArabia’s September issue cover story. 👇 https://t.co/foyrxVbKUA
— Hala Gorani (@HalaGorani) August 30, 2022
In her 2014 interview, Stone also shared that she doesn't think of growing older as negative because she chooses to get older and "growing older is my goal." In another 2020 interview with Vogue Germany, Stone shared about her journey of accepting her body. "There was a point in my forties when I went to the bathroom with a bottle of wine, locked the door and said: I won't come out until I can fully accept my body. I started crying at the sight of my slightly aging body and face in the magnifying mirror," she shared. But eventually, she realized that the only thing one can do is to slow down the process of aging with some routine and self-care. "To me, discipline is a kind of freedom," she once said.
More recently, Stone has shared a picture of herself on her Instagram page where she is in a swimsuit enjoying the day by the pool captioning it, “Gratefully Imperfect on a Perfect Day.” Speaking about powerful image and the equally impactful story behind it, Stone said in her interview that she was spending an afternoon with her friend when both woman decided to click each other to show how beautiful each of them are. “I posted it because I feel like women become invisible once we become moms and you’re 45 and people walk by you like you’re not there,” Stone shared. She and her friends have also made a choice to encourage and uplift each other, because “life doesn’t always make you feel like a winner as you grow older.” In another image of hers which she shared on Instagram at the end of August, she joked, "Why do I always get in shape when summers over?"
Editor's note: This article was originally published on September 4, 2022. It has since been updated.