Sharon Stone: ‘My whole life was wiped out’

As she stars in Sky Atlantic’s much-talked-about new thriller, sharon stone discusses her second coming with Jane Mulkerrins

without hyperbole or exaggeration, it’s safe to say that Sharon Stone was

the 1990s Hollywood sex symbol. With blockbusters such as Total Recall and

Casino, she established herself as a bona fide film star, but it was her role in the 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct – and one scene in particular – that will forever be seared in the minds of moviegoers. As the icy, bisexual sociopath Catherine Tramell, Sharon famously flashed far more than her interrogators had bargained for, as she crossed and uncrossed her legs on camera (though, in reality, much was actually left to the audience’s fevered imagination).

With an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award, she looked set to take her place among the industry elite, and then… Sharon seemingly disappeared. In September 2001, aged 43, she suffered a stroke and nine- day brain haemorrhage, which she was given just a 5% chance of surviving. Even though she pulled through, she lost almost all function in the left side of her body, leaving her unable to walk, speak or read. ‘I had to relearn everything – my whole life was wiped out,’ she says. She temporarily lost the vision in her left eye and the hearing in her left ear, too. Now, more than 25 years after Basic

Instinct catapulted her to fame, she is staging a serious comeback, this time on television, with Mosaic, a high- end HBO whodunnit directed by Steven Soderbergh, who created the role specifically for her.

It is a snowy, sleety day when we meet in Manhattan to discuss the drama, currently showing in the UK on Sky Atlantic. Sharon, who will turn 60 next month, is in unfeasibly, almost unacceptably good shape – tall, lean and angular in a pair of highwaisted, wide- legged grey trousers and wrapped in a huge camel cardigan. She is sporting a sleek cropped haircut and, even in minimal make-up, she could easily pass for 40-something.