The Many Lives of Sharon Stone

The celebrated actor and activist invents a new life on the other side of movie stardom — as a painter.

SHARON STONE IS many things, but timid is not one of them. She is undoubtedly best known to most people as an actor — one of the most visible and celebrated of her generation — but her filmography only tells a small part of her story. As described in her 2021 memoir, “The Beauty of Living Twice,” Stone’s own life has proven to be no less dramatic than the ones she has lived on screen. A longtime activist and philanthropist, she has worked tirelessly to raise awareness around HIV and AIDS, as well as raising money to build schools across Africa. Within Hollywood, she has consistently bucked the system, advocating for the rights of actors and consistently serving as a powerful voice for women in an industry that has historically undervalued them. At the age of 65, Stone has now entered a new and no less fascinating phase of her career — as a painter.

With two East Coast gallery shows of her work slated to open this year, Stone’s paintings — large, elliptical, and mostly abstract — give voice to an interior world that, as it turns out, has been there all along. Calling from her studio in California, where she works on a large canvas as we chat over Zoom, Stone is as charming and resolutely no-nonsense as one might expect. Despite having spent years dodging the slings and arrows that come with being one of the most recognizable movie stars in the world, having the opportunity to talk about her various creative pursuits is something she clearly still enjoys. “As an actor, having another creative outlet was especially important because when you’re a woman, suddenly you can’t do it anymore. Suddenly, the human condition only exists for women until you’re a certain age,” she laughs. “So this is why I paint. This is why I write. This is why I do all the other creative projects. When I started to do that many years ago, I would often hear, ‘Stay in your lane.’ I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, but my lane is simply being an artist.’”

How are you, Sharon?

Pretty good. I’m just in the middle of a painting.

Oh, nice. It looks like you have a very sweet studio setup there.

I do. I have a beautiful, beautiful studio setup. I’m very blessed. I have a pool house, and I turned it into my studio. This was Montgomery Clift’s old estate. When I bought the place, it was just a dump. It was a mess. The main house had been gutted at some point, but it was all just a disaster area. I bought it anyway and had a lot of high hopes. It’s taken me 30 years, but I put it back together. And now I have this beautiful space to paint.

I just missed you on the East Coast, but I heard that the opening of your show — the first gallery show of your paintings on this side of the country — was a big success. The paintings are beautiful.

It was just great. I mean, shockingly. I think we’re always shocked when things go great. It’s a beautiful thing. I’m just so honored and thrilled that the work is being received the way it is. Frankly, I can’t believe it.

Why not?

Well, when I started painting, I didn’t really anticipate having a show. I just thought I was painting. I don’t know if anyone who paints really starts painting with the construct that they’re painting for others. I think we just do it, and then suddenly one day people start saying, “Oh, I’d like to look at those.” And you think, Well, why do you want to look at them? And then, you feel very shy, and then you don’t know what’s happening. And then all of a sudden, people have opinions about your art, and it’s all this whole thing.

So it’s exciting, but it’s nerve-racking at the same time. Because then, you have to rely on those opinions and what they mean and what other people think about them, and that’s a lot of pressure. Because then, just like the acting thing, you realize they’re going to like them, and then they’re going to decide that they don’t like them at some point. And then, you don’t want to have that affect how you address what you’re doing. You have to stay out of it. And because I’ve been through all that before, I have to be mindful to remember not to get too engaged with that.

I wondered about that in relation to your work. I mean, having had a career that was so public and being involved in filmmaking and being an actor, which is such a deeply complicated collaborative process always, how valuable was it to you to have something that is uniquely your own?

Well, especially when you’re a woman, suddenly you can’t do it at certain ages. The human condition only exists for women until you’re a certain age. And then, you’re the wrong age to be in the human race. There aren’t any women anymore at your age. All the women your age are dead.

I always think about how valuable it is to have a creative practice that really is just yours, that is not dependent on someone else approving a budget or giving their approval.

This is why I write. This is why I’m a lyricist. This is why I do all the other things. And then when I started to do that many years ago, I would hear, “Stay in your lane.” I’m like, “I’m sorry, but my lane is being an artist. Since when did you get to choose which art I’m only allowed to do?”

That’s such a hard thing for a lot of people. People are unable or unwilling to think of anybody outside the context of this one thing they know them for.

They’re only allowed to be this because I’ve decided that this is the one you’re good at. And so, you can’t do anything else. And since that movie made money, only that, only doing that thing. It’s the weirdest thing to me. I really just find it so funny. And anyway, the whole business is men. Men write the scripts, men edit the scripts, men shoot the scripts, men light them. And so, it’s all man-talk anyway. You only can speak “man” at work.

Reading your book, I was floored by the amount of perseverance it took — and still takes — for women to deal with working in Hollywood.

Yeah. Because we’re not really allowed to bring our own sense of anything or opinion. It has to be done in the man way, and that’s just the way it is. I mean, it just is the way that it is. You just have to be in reality. I mean, if you’re in France, you’re speaking French. You know what I mean? You learn how to speak it.

Having the experience of this gallery show and this amount of interest in your visual art, has it been challenging or has it been sort of flexing a different kind of muscle, having to talk about this work and articulate what it’s about and where it’s coming from and what you think it is?

Honestly, I don’t know if anybody would be talking about my painting this much if there wasn’t a [Hollywood writers] strike and all these years of Covid. But I think because I’ve worked with AIDS charities for so many years, and I’ve been a field worker for so many years, that when Covid happened, I knew we were dealing with a viral issue. No one wanted to listen to me. And so I thought, Well, I’m just going to start doing other things.

So I wrote a book, and it became a bestseller. It’s gone into print in 22 countries. I started painting again. It’s like, “You can do whatever you want, but there isn’t going to be a business, people. Wake up and smell the coffee.” But no. So, okay. And I think because there isn’t a business, people need something to write about. And because I was already well-known in another area as an artist, this gives way to something else. I don’t know that they would be writing about me this much if there was something else to do.

Maybe not. But I also feel like it speaks to the work too. If the work wasn’t good, I don’t think there would be as much interest. And I’m not just saying that.

I hope that it’s so. I mean, I’m really certainly dedicating myself to it. I do have that. I come from a very blue-collar family. Both of my parents were child servants given away when they were very young. My dad at 4, my mom at 9. And so, we come from an extremely working-class family. I was raised to be a worker. And so, even throughout the greatest era of my fame, I took all kinds of acting jobs, which I know that people found most peculiar. But I didn’t work to just get the best job; I worked for the sake of work because I believe in working, and I really do believe life is a service job.

As for my philanthropic work, I enjoy it very much, and I’ve done that very quietly throughout all of these years and I’ve enjoyed that tremendously. And when I first started doing it, I was told by the people in this town that I couldn’t be taken seriously, that I was going to be thought of like Zsa Zsa Gabor. I thought that was a very interesting way for people to consider global humanitarian work. And I think it’s still a very odd way for me to be considered by my compatriots in the film community. But for me, it’s much more than that, and it means a great deal to me.

I have a bigger understanding than a lot of these politicians who’ve never been to a refugee camp, who’ve never been to these countries they’re so eager to blow up, who make these rash and just foolish statements. Screaming these wholehearted things that put so many people’s lives at risk for no reason whatsoever, with no thought whatsoever, and imagine that they [the politicians] are not terrorists when they say them. And I mean, it really rattles my cage. So, I think it’s best to put your head down and do something good. Write a song, paint a picture, go somewhere, and be of service. Do anything, but never shut up.

I have a friend who’s a portrait painter. Over the course of the past few years, her work became very abstract. I was like, “What do you think this is about?” and her response was: “I just started to feel like there was no form that could really contain what I was feeling.”

I can paint a portrait. But lately, I just have felt like people in general aren’t that interesting to me right now. People are exhausting themselves right now, and it’s just exhausting looking at them. I’ve only painted a couple of portraits. It’s not that I don’t like people, but I find people who actually do something much more interesting than people who just talk about doing something. People who create things are always more interesting.

Had you not become a successful actor or if the path had diverged slightly, do you feel like being a visual artist would have always been your path in some capacity?

I think so. I mean, I wanted to direct films, but they wouldn’t let me. I found a script I really, really wanted to direct. I broke it down. I did storyboards. I brought in all the music for every single scene. I pitched it to a production company, and they said, “This is the best pitch we’ve ever heard, but no.” I went to the studio: “I’d like to have money to make this film.” “No.”

I mean, over the years I brought in directors that no one had ever heard of, and they directed the most financially successful films that had ever been made at the studio. And still, no. They brought me into casting sessions. I helped them cast some people that they’d never heard of who became the biggest stars in this industry. But no, I couldn’t direct. I mean, it was just incomprehensible the resistance to women doing anything. I was one of the producers on some of my movies, and I would come in with these wonderful ideas. Ideas that are now very, very common in filmmaking, and they would say, “That’s it. We’ve had enough of you. You’re out of this now. You’re done.” And they wouldn’t let me continue to produce my own films because I wanted modern music on a period film. And of course, that’s something that’s done all the time now. No. Just because they were my ideas and not theirs.

“The first thing you can do creatively is clean out your stuff and give it to other people, and you will be amazed how creative you become. It changes your entire environment, which changes you. You create space in your life for something new. I think that’s extremely creative.”

To have been somebody in the culture that was so globally, ubiquitously, recognizable, and to then have been made, against your will, the nexus of all these opinions about what it meant to be a powerful woman and how that could be used against you …

So powerful that I got shut down. Completely knocked out of the business because I became too powerful. How can you do “Basic Instinct” and then be ignored? How can you do “Casino” and never get any more jobs? It was just like, “Shut the [expletive] up, Sharon.”

It’s really maddening. I mean, I think your ability to persevere and to have a sense of humor about it is astounding.

I’m Irish. I think it is lucky that I’m Irish. It’s lucky that I understand that you have to stand against the wind.

Do you find that the culture of Hollywood is, at its core, any different now than it was then?

Do you not really think that the turnover of Roe v. Wade wasn’t a reaction to MeToo? Have things changed now? No. Do you not think that the business is shut down until we all shut up? The amount of things that the Writers Guild is currently asking for in the strike is a 0.2% increase. Not even an entire percent. We can’t overlook the pittance that people are asking for. People aren’t asking for the moon. They’re not even asking for a look at the moon.

I wanted to say something about your work regarding HIV and AIDS. I’m a person whose life has been deeply affected by those things, so I think your work has been so amazing. So, thank you for that.

You have no idea how much it makes me happy to hear that. Thank you for saying that.

There was a thing that happened with a lot of people I knew when Covid started. For people who remembered what the advent of the AIDS crisis felt like, there were certain resonances, things that felt eerily familiar …

Are you kidding? It was so triggering I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. It was so triggering when people wouldn’t listen. We had this out-of-control global virus, and people were like, “Nope. Kids can come back to school now. No worries, this will just blow over soon.” I was like, “Oh, okay. Oh, no. Oh my god.” I was just spinning. But for some of us, for the majority of our adult lives, we have been addressing these kinds of issues. I just had to channel that feeling.

If there is one thing I’ve tried to channel over the past few chaotic years, it’s that sometimes catastrophe can also provide a moment of reinvention. It can be a moment of reset.

That is something I think about often. You know, the planet will survive. It’s like gravity. It doesn’t need your agreement to be there. And so, I feel that what we do or don’t do is not going to affect the planet ultimately, because plants and flowers are the most heartily surviving things and will eventually survive and overtake. But humans won’t make it if they don’t make a decision, and that’s okay, I think. I think that’s okay. And I think if this dysfunctional humanity wipes itself out and begins again, that’s okay too. And if we do our best — those of us who choose to be and do our best — if we do our best, that’s okay. I think that’s the point. I don’t know what happens next, and I think that’s wonderful too.

It’s nice to make peace with that idea. All you can do is your best.

I think happiness is a discipline, but it’s hard to maintain, and we have to check in with ourselves. I have this thing where I try and check in with myself every three days. How were my last three days? What do I need to do to reset? I have a couple of things that I do that help me with that. I have this hard metal bracelet. It’s hard to get on, and it’s uncomfortable, and it has a Sanskrit prayer that says, “As here, so elsewhere.” I have another metal bracelet that’s a copy of Nelson Mandela’s prison bracelet, so I put those two bracelets on together, and I wear them if I’ve lost track of myself. They force me to wake up because I do want to be awake. And I believe that this thing, the anti-“woke” thing that has become so prevalent, is exactly what it’s saying, “Please go back to sleep. Please stay asleep.” I mean, banning books? What is happening? I think it’s clear what that means, and I think we have to be awake, be very much awake.

You obviously have a very robust creative life, but what do you say to people who don’t?

There’s a book called “The Happiness Project” that I truly love. My friend gave it to me when she was dying, and it has been so helpful to me. And it’s essentially about cleaning your house. It starts with cleaning your house and making your bed. And so, I make my bed every morning. I could have someone else do it, but I think it’s very important to make your own bed. I think it’s very important to clean out your drawers. Even if you do it while you’re on the phone, just pull a trash can over and clean out a drawer every day, and then clean out your closet and look at all your stuff and get rid of anything that doesn’t bring you happiness. Because we all have way too much stuff, and most of it is stuff that other people can use.

When I turned 50, I made a decision that I was going to give away half of my belongings. I felt like I was at the halfway mark of my life, so I wanted to mark that. I had someone come with a semi truck, and I gave away half my furniture, half my dishes, half my silverware, half my clothes, half my everything — and it was fantastic. Actually, I could do it again right now. I’ve hired someone to come and help me liquidate my property. I just want to get rid of things. I find it makes me very happy.

I would really recommend this to people who don’t think they’re creative. The first thing you can do creatively is clean out your stuff and give it to other people, and you will be amazed how creative you become. It changes your entire environment, which changes you. You create space in your life for something new. I think that’s extremely creative.

It sounds like this is a very exciting moment for you. I know there are more shows of your paintings in the works, which must feel good.

It is exciting. It’s really fun. It’s really exciting to just keep painting. I mean, I’m going to keep painting no matter what. But now I have studio visits, and people come here and look at my art and buy things from the studio, and there are people who just come to visit and other artists who come and work with me in my studio, which I really enjoy. It’s just become an ever-expanding project. I’m also in the middle of [writing] another book, so I think I’m just going to continue working as an artist, and we’ll see where that leads me. That’s how I’ve always operated.

The first East Coast show of Sharon Stone’s paintings, “Welcome to My Garden,” is on view at the C. Parker Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut, through January 15.