Los Angeles, California - Sharon Stone said people financially "took advantage" of her while she was recovering from the near-fatal stroke she suffered in 2001.

The Basic Instinct star's stroke cause a nine-day brain bleed, which forced her to take a step away from Hollywood for seven years while she recovered fully.

"People took advantage of me over that time," she told The Hollywood Reporter.

"I had $18 million saved because of all my success, but when I got back into my bank account, it was all gone."

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"My refrigerator, my phone – everything was in other people's names."

"I had zero money."

The 66-year-old said instead of feeling bitter about what she experienced following her stroke, she chooses to focus on the positive.

"I decided to stay present and let go. I decided not to hang onto being sick or to any bitterness or anger," Stone said.

"If you bite into the seed of bitterness, it never leaves you. But if you hold faith, even if that faith is the size of a mustard seed, you will survive. So, I live for joy now. I live for purpose."

Stone revealed the stroke completely changed the way her brain worked.

"A Buddhist monk told me that I had been reincarnated into my same body. I had a death experience and then they brought me back."

"I bled into my brain for nine days, so my brain was shoved to the front of my face. It wasn’t positioned in my head where it was before."

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"And while that was happening, everything changed. My sense of smell, my sight, my touch. I couldn’t read for a couple of years. Things were stretched and I was seeing color patterns."

"A lot of people thought I was going to die."

Stone previously said doctors thought she was "faking" what turned out to be a brain hemorrhage that had resulted from a ruptured vertebral artery.

In 2023, she told Vogue magazine: "They missed it with the first angiogram and decided that I was faking it."

"My best friend talked them into giving me a second one and they discovered that I had been hemorrhaging into my brain, my whole subarachnoid pool, and that my vertebral artery was ruptured. I would have died if they had sent me home."

The Hollywood veteran said that she takes medication daily to address the stuttering and severe brain seizures.