Sharon Stone Once Locked Herself in a Bathroom and ‘Cried and Cried’ When She Hit Her 40s
Actor Sharon Stone learned how to find beauty and comfort in her skin after approaching her middle-aged years. But it wasn’t always easy for the Oscar-nominee to accept she was getting older. After she approached her 40s, Stone admitted to having a bit of an emotional breakdown.
Sharon Stone didn’t think she’d be able to find work again after hitting 40
At the time, turning 40 came with a few challenges for Stone’s career. The Casino star didn’t want to be like other female actors in Hollywood who lied about their age after getting older. So Stone took the opposite approach and announced that she was 40 even when she had one more year to spend in her 30s. But that announcement came with fast negative consequences.
“I was actually 39 and working like mad and told everyone that I was about to hit 40. I think they misheard that I had leprosy, and suddenly I didn’t work for a while,” she once said in an interview with BBC.
Stone hoped to see Hollywood progress enough to where women actors finding work in their older years became more common.
“I’m not particularly interested in pretending to be 35 for seven years, but now I think there has been an evolution where you can be 45 and work in film, where you can actually say you’re 45 and still have an interesting career,” she said.
Sharon Stone once locked herself in a bathroom and had an emotional breakdown after hitting her 40s
Apart from her career, her 40s were also briefly troubling to her because of the physical affects of aging. Stone didn’t feel comfortable with how her looks were beginning to change after a certain point, which soon led to a breakdown.
“There was a point in my 40s when I went into the bathroom with a bottle of wine, locked the door, and said, ‘I’m not coming out until I can totally accept the way that I look right now.’ And I examined my face in the magnifying mirror, and I looked at my body, and I cried and cried and cried,” she once told Shape (via Vogue).
But the Basic Instinct star later realized she needed to move past these thoughts for her own sake.
“Then I said to myself, ‘You’re going to get old now,'” she continued. “How do you want to do that?”
Sharon Stone once revealed her biggest regret about being in her 40s
Stone not only learned to accept being in her 40s, but embraced the idea with welcome arms. So much so that in her later years she considered her 40s to be the best decade of her life.
“My 40s were so beautiful. I couldn’t work because women, once they got to be 40, were not given jobs in Hollywood,” she once said in an interview with Allure. “I was a mom with three beautiful little boys. I was recovering from a massive brain injury, and I was in custody court constantly over my oldest child. But there was something wonderful in that period of all those challenges.”
Stone shared that although she stayed single for most of that period, she didn’t mind not having a significant other.
“And even though no one wanted to date me — no one would want a woman that had little children — it was a period of reconciliation and change, and understanding myself. It was my period of the biggest change, but the period where I thought I was the most beautiful,” she continued.
But the Catwoman actor also regretted not settling down and finding someone to romance during that time.
“I wish that someone had fallen in love with me, I guess. I think life would have been less harsh with a partner,” she confided.
