Sharon Stone has admitted her custody battle was harmed by “Basic Instinct”.
The 64-year-old actress has reflected on her role in the racy 1992 movie was part of the reason she lost custody of her son Roan, now 22, whom, she adopted with her ex Phil Bronstein.
Appearing on iHeart’s “Table for Two With Bruce Bozzi” podcast, she said: “I lost custody of my child. When the judge asked my child – my tiny little, tiny boy, ‘Do you know your mother makes sex movies?’”
She alleged it was a “kind of abuse by the system”, noting that her role in the film made them question what she was like as a parent.
She added: “I was considered what kind of parent I was, because I made that movie. People are walking around with no clothes on at all on regular TV now and you saw maybe a sixteenth of a second of possible nudity of me and I lost custody of my child.”
Stone noted the situation affected her physical and mental health.
She explained: “I ended up in the Mayo Clinic with extra heartbeats in the upper and lower chambers of my heart… It broke my heart. It literally broke my heart.”
She has opened up about the custody battle in the past, although she didn’t reveal the reason for her losing custody at the time due to both a confidentiality agreement and out of “respect” for her son.
In her 2021 memoir “The Beauty of Living Twice”, she wrote: “I was punished for changing the rules of how we see women, and I understand that by writing this book I could be punished again. But this time I’m not afraid.”
She opened up on her feelings about the ordeal, admitting she “couldn’t function” and ended up sleeping “every afternoon”, unable to “get up”.
She found out she had a prolapsed valve and was anorexic.
She wrote: “I had stopped eating and fallen apart and hadn’t even noticed. I had just lain down and given up. My heart, it seemed, was actually broken.”
She continued to fight for her son for over a decade in a “game of custody chess”.
She added: “I did that for 13 years; I played a very long, very difficult game of custody chess in an effort to get him everything I could for his health and well-being.
“Now my home and my family are complete and I am able to re-find success in the rest of my life, as my heart is also complete.”