Sharon Stone is grateful she got what she calls a “second life” after her debilitating 2001 stroke, but she’ll never forget how it felt to nearly die.
During a new episode of the CNN podcast “All There Is with Anderson Cooper” — released on June 26, 2026 — the legendary actress described who and what she saw as she lost consciousness on that fateful day 25 years ago.
Sharon Stone Remembers Bright Light & Loved Ones ‘Welcoming’ Her During Her Near-Death Experience
During her intimate conversation with Anderson about grief, loss, and trauma, she shared the spiritual experience of nearly losing her own life in 2001 after Anderson noted, “You came very close to dying.”
Stone replied, “Yeah, in fact, some would say I did die and was defibrillated and brought back. I had that white light experience, which has stayed upon my shoulder and made me feel quite safe in this continued existence.”
When Anderson asked if she’d be willing to share what she experienced, Stone said, “I saw and felt myself being pulled upward into this incredibly bright white. But white doesn’t exactly explain it. This light that is brighter than anything we’ve ever experienced, like moving directly into something bright as the sun, but not yellow.”
“And as I was whooshing upwards, the top of it appeared to open,” Stone continued. “And friends of mine, dear ones who had passed, and particularly dear ones who I had aided in their passing, who and I loved so much, were peeking at me through the top of this light, and smiling at me, and welcoming me.”
“I was so happy to see them,” she recalled, “when all of a sudden I felt like I’d been kicked in the chest by a mule, you know, just, wow. And I expect they must have defibrillated me.”
Stone told Anderson, “And I just remember gasping, like, like that kind of thing when you’ve been underwater too long, like you’re swimming in a lake or somewhere, and you just, all of a sudden you’re like, oh, I’m underwater way too long. And you come up for air and you’re just like, ‘Oh!’ I had that kind of experience and I sat up. And then I remember they said, ‘They’re going to take you to a neurological hospital. You’ll be okay, we’ve got you.’ And I passed out again.”
In 2021, she told Willie Geist on “Sunday Today” that she found it comforting later when she learned others had “profound” experiences in life-and-death circumstances.
“I found out that I wasn’t the only one who’d had this kind of experience,” she said. “It’s so profound. And I know that scientists feel that it’s a scientific thing that happens. And spiritualists believe that it’s a spiritual thing. Personally, I’m with (Albert) Einstein, who believed that it’s both.”
Sharon Stone Was Given a 1% Chance of Survival in 2001
GettyStone suffered a near-fatal ruptured vertebral artery and massive brain hemorrhage in September 2001, and was given a 1% chance of survival, per People.
In 2025, she told the outlet, “I walked out of that hospital, 18% of my body mass gone, dragging my right foot, unable to write my own name.”
On a 2014 episode of “Oprah’s Master Class,” Stone said her recovery — and the fallout — was brutal, explaining, “I thought that I was dying for a long time, even after I came home. There was a part of me that felt like wow, I lost so much. My career was basically over, my family was over, I got divorced, my child was taken away — a lot of my identity, I thought. I got down, down to it. And when I got down to it, it’s like being a phoenix. I was burned to the ground. Because everything I had been before, I thought, ‘I’m not any of those things anymore.'”
