Sharon Stone's Debilitating Stroke Cost Her Millions: See Her Net Worth Now
Sharon Stone's net worth in 2024 isn't what it should be—and there are several reasons for that.
The Oscar-nominated actress has lamented that sexism in Hollywood hurts women's careers overall, not just her own.
"Hollywood is set up to be misogynistic. It's a business run by men. It's a business where men make the money. Where men write, produce and direct the projects. Where men write the parts that are played by women," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "And those parts are not written about real women. They're written to be the fantasy of how women should be. Then, the male critics tell you if you met the fantasy or not, if you behaved in the right way."
Even some of her biggest roles didn't pay her anything even close to equity with her male co-stars, she previously told PEOPLE, and she's had to fight to get fair pay for most of her career.
"After Basic Instinct, no one wanted to pay me," she said (via Entertainment Weekly). "I remember sitting in my kitchen with my manager and just crying and saying, 'I'm not going to work until I get paid.' I still got paid so much less than any men."
From misogyny to a major health crisis, Stone's income has ebbed more than it's flowed. Find out her net worth and why, in an ideal world, it'd be a lot higher.
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How did Sharon Stone become famous?
Stone came from humble roots in rural Pennsylvania—and some seriously royal roots that she didn't know about until recently.
"My dad made $14,000 a year and had four kids, and we were considered wealthy in our community because I had school shoes and play shoes," she told The Hollywood Reporter in July 2024. "I grew up in a place with no stoplights. There were 87 people in my class. Kids drove their tractors to school after they did their chores. But you know what, I just found out that I’m French royalty. I just did that show on PBS, Finding Your Roots, and it turns out I’m related to Charlemagne. I am from a long line of royalty in France."
A local and state pageant regular, Stone dropped out of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania before graduating to move to New York City to pursue modeling. She was signed to Ford Models quickly and decided to try her hand at acting, with her first role being in Woody Allen's 1980 film Stardust Memories, followed by the 1981 Wes Craven slasher Deadly Blessing.
Stone followed with guest roles in several TV shows, including Magnum, P.I. and T.J. Hooker, and small roles in a handful of movies throughout the 1980s. Her breakthrough came in 1990 with Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger.
She followed its success with several thrillers and a rom-com, but it would be her 1992 smash Basic Instinct—and its infamous leg-crossing scene—that would make Stone a bona fide star.
She said that her fame, and especially her reception at the Cannes Film Festival after Basic Instinct, was when she knew she'd made it.
"When I was little, growing up in Meadville, Pennsylvania, I had this feeling that I was going to be a movie star. This is who I was going to be," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "I was going to live in a house that had a spiral staircase. It was weird because I was super shy. When I read from the Bible in church, I was so shy my tears would drop on the Bible pages. I was the sort of kid who sat in my closet with a flashlight and read. But I just knew I was going to be a star. So, when it happened, I just suddenly felt like I was in my body."
What is Sharon Stone's net worth in 2024?
Sharon Stone's net worth in 2024 is estimated at $40 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth, but chances are it's actually lower, per her own account. Her net worth would be higher if not for a truly heartbreaking and infuriating reason.
Amid her divorce from then-husband Phil Bronstein, Stone suffered a debilitating stroke in 2001, and she told The Hollywood Reporter that during her recovery, people took advantage of her and spent her hard-earned money while she was out of work for seven years.
"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," she recalled. "It wasn't positioned in my head where it was before. 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."
"I had $18 million saved because of all my success, but when I got back into my bank account, it was all gone," she said. "My refrigerator, my phone—everything was in other people's names. I had zero money."
How much did Sharon Stone get paid for Casino?
Stone's salary for Casino isn't publicly known, but she did get to keep her wardrobe for the film — and the wardrobe budget alone was $1 million (more than $2 million when adjusted for inflation). However, she told Vogue in 2020 that she only kept a single costume item, a Pucci jacket, from the Martin Scorsese classic.
Stone was nominated for an Oscar for her star turn as the stunning-but-troubled Ginger, but she wasn't exactly devastated, nor surprised, when she lost.
"I was never going to win an Oscar. Not ever," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "Francis Ford Coppola came to me when I was nominated and said, 'You're not going to win.' He was like, 'I want you to be prepared. I don't want you to fall apart in front of these people.'"
Stone did, however, win a Golden Globe for her performance.
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How much did Sharon Stone make for The Quick and the Dead?
Stone said she was initially signed on to make $3 million for The Quick and the Dead, but gave up a full third of her salary to get Leonardo DiCaprio—who'd just had a star turn in What's Eating Gilbert Grape—to play her son in the movie.
"This kid named Leonardo DiCaprio was the only one who nailed the audition, in my opinion: he was the only one who came in and cried, begging his father to love him as he died in the scene," she wrote in her memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice (via Business Insider). "The studio said if I wanted him so much, I could pay him out of my own salary. So I did."
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How much did Sharon Stone get paid for Basic Instinct?
Stone has been vocal about feeling underpaid for her starring role in Basic Instinct. She wrote in an essay for InStyle that she negotiated to keep all of her custom costumes from the film since she wasn't being paid even close to what the male lead, Michael Douglas, took home for the thriller.
"People thought I was crazy, but the truth is I wasn't getting paid much compared to my male co-star. I made $500,000; Michael made $14 million," she wrote. "So keeping my costumes was a really smart thing to do."
She also told The Hollywood Reporter that the film changed the game in a big way in terms of what studios were comfortable showing women do onscreen.
"You know, until Basic Instinct, women had to cross their legs a certain way on the screen, at the ankles. You couldn't cross your legs like a man," she said. "You weren't even allowed to show your armpits. We had to get permission for me to show my armpits in that movie."
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How much did Sharon Stone make for Basic Instinct 2?
Stone reportedly made $13.6 million to reprise her role of Catherine Trammell in Basic Instinct 2, released in 2006.
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