Sharon Stone was in the third season of Euphoria that just ended on HBO. This is why we’ve seen more interviews with her lately, including a Variety Actors on Actors episode Keke Palmer — an inspired pairing! (Sidenote: in that conversation, Sharon called AI “A cover band. … It’s never going to be the Rolling Stones; it’s always going to be somebody singing the Rolling Stones.” Nailed it!) But we’re actually here to talk about another interview, an hour-long appearance Sharon made on David Begnaud’s The Person Who Believed In Me podcast. The person who believed in Sharon was her father, who she says was tough on her, but always in the name of her being her best self. More specifically, he always called her out when she was diminishing herself to fit in. Obviously the message stuck, because later in the podcast Sharon talks about the moment she knew her relationship with second husband Phil Bronstein was over: when he got mad at her for deciding, on her own, to have a medically-advised double mastectomy to remove large tumors in her breasts.
“One of [the tumors] was bigger than the size of my entire left breast,” Sharon recalled. “And the doctor had come out to my house and said, ‘Look, we think you should have a bilateral mastectomy. This is really bad. And we usually, when they’re all the way up into here, we know before we go in that they’re cancer.”
While Sharon remembered feeling certain that her tumors were not cancerous, she agreed to undergo a double mastectomy. “I am deciding that I will have a bilateral because I’m not f–king around,” she recalled saying at the time.
Sharon went on to reveal that her husband at the time was “furious” at her for deciding to undergo the surgery.
Sharon didn’t name her ex, but she was married to film director and producer Michael Greenburg between 1984 and 1990 (separated in 1987), and then journalist Phil Bronstein between 1998 and 2004.
“My husband said, ‘This is ridiculous!’ And got up and left the room,” Sharon recalled.
When host David asked which part was ridiculous, Sharon said, “That I would have a bilateral. He was furious.”
David questioned, “Oh, not that the cancer, if it was true, might kill you?” Sharon replied, “No, no.”
Once again, David clarified, “He was mad about the breasts being removed,” to which Sharon said, “Yeah. And so the doctor said to him, ‘If I had more patients like her, we’d have more women alive today. You need to sit down.’ And I said, ‘I make the decisions, not you.’”
Sharon said that her husband’s reaction ultimately marked a shift in their relationship. “That was the end of the marriage. That was it. He was done with me then. It was over,” she said.
Sharon continued, “It was just over in the room. You could just tell. It was over. It was just over. He thought I was ridiculous. He thought it was foolish. He thought I was making too many decisions myself.”
Sharon ultimately didn’t end up undergoing the bilateral mastectomy because her tumors were benign.
Wait, they found these tumors in the early 2000s? So this happened on top of the near-fatal stroke she had in 2001?? My gosh, what she went through. Oh, and let’s not forget that Phil Bronstein was just as big a d–k during that medical emergency as well, getting into nasty divorce proceedings while she was in recovery from a stroke she had a 1% chance of surviving. The BuzzFeed article goes on to include examples of people responding online to Sharon’s story with their own cases of men being terrible under similar circumstances. They even referenced an oft-cited study on partner abandonment that says, “A married man is six times more likely to separate from or divorce his wife soon after a diagnosis of cancer or multiple sclerosis than a married woman in the same situation.” And somehow men have perpetuated the myth for centuries that they’re the strongest gender. As if.
My heartfelt admiration goes out to Sharon for knowing her worth, even when she was at her most vulnerable. And I’ll close out here by echoing Sharon and giving a nod to my own late father, who frequently would turn to me and my mother to apologize for the acts of his species gender.
Photos credit: Axel Groussett/Avalon, Ángel Díaz Briñas/Europa Press/Avalon, Stefano Costantino TTL/Avalon, IMAGO/Eventpress Berndt/Avalon, Getty Images, Look Press Agency/Avalon