The Beauty of Living Twice: Sharon Stone Revisited
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Hi, everyone. We're celebrating our one-year anniversary of In Search of Excellence by rebroadcasting a couple of our early episodes that people loved. And I wanted to reshare my interview with Sharon Stone. I first met Sharon 20 years ago when she was one of the most famous movie stars in the world. All in all, she's been in 52 movies, including the blockbuster Alpha Dog, starring Justin Timberlake, Bruce Willis, and Randall Kaplan. And she has won 43 awards for her acting. Her story is inspirational.

She got her start by winning $100 in a beauty contest when she was in college, drove to New York with her mom to knock on the door of the owner of the biggest model agency in the world, and started traveling the world as a model. Before we start my interview, I want to thank all of my listeners and viewers over the past 12 months for the overwhelming support I've received for In Search of Excellence. The past 25 interviews have been incredibly meaningful to me. It's been an honor to share them, and I'm eager to interview more incredible guests and share their inspirational stories with you in the year ahead.

Say please and thank you to everyone who gives you an opportunity. Call them Mr. and Mrs. Don't think you can waltz in there and start calling people by their first names. It is really important to acknowledge people and let them know that it means something that they had a minute for you.

Welcome to In Search of Excellence, our quest for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be, to learn, educate, and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face in our lives.

Achieving excellence is our goal and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings. We all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. Today, my guest is the amazingly talented Sharon Stone. She's an incredible actress whose career spans more than four decades and who achieved global superstardom with the movie Basic Instinct. She's been at 52 movies and has won 43 awards for her acting, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama.

and an Academy Award nomination, both for the movie Casino. She's appeared on the covers of over 300 celebrity and fashion magazines throughout her career and was named by People Magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. She's also a producer, the mother of three sons, and has been an incredible humanitarian and philanthropist. She has been honored by the Nobel Peace Laureates and was given the Nobel Peace Summit Award by the Dalai Lama. She's a stroke survivor,

and the author of her recently released bestselling autobiography titled The Beauty of Living Twice, which goes through her fascinating life, including how she overcame some incredible personal and professional challenges, which we're going to talk about today. Sharon, welcome to In Search of Excellence. Thank you. I'm really delighted to be here.

I always start my podcast with our family. And from the moment we're born, our family helps shape our personality, our values, and the preparation for our future. You grew up in Meadville, Pennsylvania, a town of 12,000 people and an Irish family. Your mom was an accountant and a homemaker. Your dad was a tool and die manufacturer and a factory worker. You have three siblings.

But I want to start with your mom. You wrote in your book, it was very raw, that you didn't like her very much growing up. In fact, at various points of the book, you said you hated her. Can you talk about your relationship with your mother? Yeah, I can. I'd like to start out by saying we don't hate each other and I like her now. But it was complicated because my mother had such a horrific childhood, which when you're a kid...

and particularly kids of Depression-era parents or kids, I'm sure, who were Holocaust survivors, you don't really know about your parents' childhood. Not only that they had such horrible childhoods, but that their best way of survival was not talking about their childhood. And my mother was born into a

just terrible poverty, real what was called hillbilly poverty where I come from. And there were five kids in her family, one of whom was killed by a drunk driver and actually knocked right out of my mother's hand crossing the street. And she was killed and thrown in the air and came back down and was dead when she hit the ground as a very small child.

My mother still says she remembers the state trooper who carried her into the house and put her to bed because she remembers his big hat. She had rickets and scurvy from malnutrition and the just extreme poverty. Her mother walked miles every day to the welfare office to try to get welfare tickets to feed her children. Her mother was a housekeeper and her mother was a housekeeper. You know, during those times, there

There were signs in the windows of the stores that said, no dogs, no Irish.

which is something that I think people don't really realize, especially now during the Black Lives Matter movement. Certainly a lot of people in our country have forgotten that Irish were considered people of color in that time. And it was a very difficult period for all Irish immigrants. And

My mother was just so abused and beaten so badly by her father, as was her mother, that she went to school and she was bleeding through the back of her gym suit and was taken to the principal's office to see why. And it was as her father had beaten her and child welfare services gave my mother away to a family whom the mother had asthma and was unable to take

take care of her children. So my mother became the live-in maid, wash woman, housekeeper, cook for this family when she was nine. And so she went to school and she saved her nickels and dimes that she was given to take the bus to buy her own winter coat, for example. And that's how she grew up.

And for my mother, that was an incredible stroke of good luck and great good fortune. And to this day, she considers that family that took her in as the greatest thing that ever happened to her and her greatest luck. Not that she was a child laborer, a child servant, and never, ever had a day of childhood. And so...

She and my father married when they were 16 and 17, respectively. And that was her life. So...

She didn't really understand how to treat children like children or to be a parent who would hug her kids, for example, or tell her kids that she loved them or that they were terrific or any of that kind of parent thing because there was nothing, nothing in her life that would have led her to believe that that was a parental activity.

We have some interesting similarities in our background. My grandmother was raised in foster care. And one day when she was six years old and her sister was seven years old, their mother had left. Their dad dropped them off on the street corner in Detroit and says, I can't take this anymore.

And they found a Christian church that took them in, gave them some food and shelter, but they split them up when they were younger. And my grandmother bounced around to a lot of different foster care homes. And she lived with a family who basically treated her like a maid. She had to sleep in a closet, and she was the maid. She cleaned the floors. She did not eat with the family. She ate separately. But she met my grandfather when he was 16, and she married him when he was 16 as well.

So I certainly can sympathize with the foster care background. And it's one of the causes I support very much is foster care. Let's talk about your grandmother as well. You said that in the book, there's never been someone as beautiful as her. What was your relationship with your grandmother? And then how did your mom and grandmother, what was the mix there in terms of how they influenced you and your growing up? Well,

Well, my grandmother, who was my father's mother, my father came from extraordinary wealth when he was born. He was born into an oil family in Oil City, Pennsylvania. But when he was little, there was a terrible... Well, they said it was an accident, but there is some speculation over whether it was an accident and the oil well blew and killed everyone on the oil site.

His partner, who was his brother, my great uncle, died. And then my grandfather died of pneumonia quickly after that. And in those days, the money didn't go to women. Women had no rights. So my grandfather's money did not go to my grandmother. It went to my great uncle's 18-year-old son. And so you can imagine how that went. So my grandmother went from being quite wealthy to being...

completely broke, destitute very quickly. And my dad, when he was four, and my uncle, when he was three, were given to another uncle who first, and then his great-grandmother, and they lived in someone's barn stalls and did farm work. And my grandmother went to work in an asylum and took her daughter, Vaughn, with her.

And that side of the family grew up until my father worked and bought back the family home and everybody moved back in there when my uncle came home from the Navy. And he joined the Navy when he was about 15 or 16, which you can just imagine the life on a Navy ship for a 15 or 16-year-old boy. So I thought my grandmother was like pretty tough, pretty amazing, pretty cool, but

that she pulled it all back together. Let's talk about your grandfather for a few minutes. We all have had, in your case, you particularly had something very bad happen that influenced your life for a very long period of time when you were 14 when he died. And you were happy to see him dead. What had happened there? And can you talk about what you experienced and how that influenced you going forward?

Yes. My grandfather was a pedophile. And of course, I have no real understanding of how that worked itself out with my mom and her sisters. Her sisters all died in their early 60s and had incredible mental health issues. My mother was the only one that sustained and survived. He was a horrible, broken man.

creature and extremely abusive to my grandmother. He beat her constantly and beat her violently. And I had never seen death before. My sister and I went up to his coffin and

She asked me if he was really dead and I didn't know. So she asked me to touch him to make sure he was dead. And so I poked him and we realized he was dead. And we were at the same time freaked out and thrilled that this horrible creature was done. But it's a terrible way for a child to process death for the first time, for it to be a great thing.

But it was an awful experience and an awful day. And the whole situation of the funeral was not like a normal funeral where people sit down and grieve. It was a funeral where all the seats were empty and everyone stood in the back of the room in tight little clusters murmuring. There was no service. No one spoke. And eventually everyone just kind of dwindled out the back. It was a nightmare.

Being sexually assaulted is a very prevalent problem. I don't think many people know the stats. I've been on the board of the National Center for Victims of Crime for almost two years, so I know some of the stats.

One in five girls and one in 20 boys are victims of child sexual abuse. Three out of four are victims from someone they know very well, and they typically don't report it because of shame. They're embarrassed. They may go to foster care. They may go homeless. What's your advice to people listening to this? Well, first of all, I'd like to comment on the stats. Okay. The stats are the stats of the people that have said so. Right. And...

Right. And so the stats are grossly incorrect.

Because there is so much trauma and shaming and gross misconduct around the behavior of people when you do say what's happened. And I can tell you just from releasing this book that the conduct of people around me when I first started to try to discuss this in interviews was so reprehensible.

that I had to take a couple of weeks off and balance myself just so that I could understand the people that were talking to me were triggered and that many of the people that were talking to me had never come to terms with their own abuse. And it took me some time off to grow into this understanding, to grow into the reality that the people that

were being so either indifferent or aggressive or cruel in their characterizations or

terminology or peculiar construct of the way they talked to me were triggered, that they themselves had had some sort of abuse that they were unable to either access, discuss, come to terms with.

And so they were essentially taking it out on me. I didn't really understand in the first couple of weeks what was happening. And I was being upset and triggered and panic responding because I didn't really understand how much the fact that I had spoken about it with balance and confidence and long time consideration had kind of freaked people out.

So I took a couple of weeks off so that I could digest what had happened and be more calm and comfortable and also comforting in the way that I could respond to people simply because these statistics are so incorrect. I would say the truth of the matter is it's more like four out of five people have dealt with this in one way or another from, you

I would say the misdemeanor level to the full-blown violent felony level. I don't think that even the misdemeanor level can be blown off because if you haven't had someone to talk about it to, it can fester and build and become quite frightening. I think that what really needs to happen is there has to become some sort of truth and reconciliation space where people can speak without this kind of

incorrect response so that people can speak and knowledgeable, calm people can respond, where no consequences at all have to happen, where no action has to take place at all, where you can actually just say what happened, or you can even say what you did and nothing has to happen, so that you can say you committed a sexually inappropriate act

and just talk to somebody. I think we need these kind of hotlines so that people can start to get to a point where they can even feel free to talk about things so they can even know, was this a wrong thing that I did? Or was this a wrong thing that happened to me? Or did I understand it correctly? Did I interpret it correctly? Certainly in the case of date rape, it is very hard for people to understand what happened.

And what happened to them and what happened to the person who committed it even. Because sometimes people do things and they don't realize what's happening to them in the moment they're committing an inappropriate action. And so there needs to be more places for people to tell the truth and have reconciliation with themselves before they have to go tell someone where there are consequences and

to be taken against another person or consequences for themselves because it's too big and too many opinionated people start weighing in too quickly. Let's go back to the happier part of your childhood. I want to talk about what you were like as a kid and what did you do for fun?

Well, I was a very precocious kid because I started walking and talking really, really early. And that was very frightening for my parents. I started painting and all kinds of things when I was really little. And so my parents started taking me to get all kinds of tests. I felt a little like a science experiment.

So I started school really early. I started second grade when I was five. And that was really strange for the teachers and the testers. You've got to remember, this was like 1963.

So I'm in second grade in 1963 and the teachers are like, you know, super freaked out. And I'm already writing in cursive and telling them like, no, I don't think that's correct. And I'm that precocious kid who's like raising my hand constantly and telling the teacher, no, I think it's Edgar Allan Poe, you know. And the teacher just kind of had it with me. And so then they were like, well, we think she has to go back to first grade

because she doesn't have any social consciousness. She doesn't know how to behave. So basically, I think I was just too much of a pain in the ass. So about halfway through that first year, they put me in the chair attached to my desk and slid me down the hallway to first grade, where of course, I was even less of a fit in because I was already halfway through second grade and advanced. And so then they just started doing this thing where

This was the era of lots of testing on kids.

So the speed reading machine with the crank on the side came in and then all of the tests with the playing cards and fill out these tests and do this test and do that test. So basically I became the guinea pig of my school. So that's what I was doing as a kid. I was a guinea pig. And then by the time I got to fourth grade, they were doing these Mensa tests. And so I

I was put in this special program, taken out of class with the rest of the kids. And there was a few of us and we were taken into, because I was from such a small town, we were taken into the cafeteria and we went to school in the cafeteria for three years. And we did all of those, you know, when the train leaves the station at this many miles per hour and there's this many people on the train or put all the states and all of their capitals in alphabetical order.

And the real test wasn't the states and their capitals, but if you did the states and their capitals separately.

You know, it was how you read the question. So and then if you won, you got the hula hoop or the gum or whatever, you know, so it was all this kind of competitive gameplay. And so then by the time I was in, I guess, ninth grade, they started doing a whole lot of other kind of testing. And then they brought people to the school to start to talk to me about the tests that I took.

And then by 10th grade, I was going to college while I was going to high school. And then pretty soon after that, I was just going to college when I was, I guess, 16 or something.

Let's talk about one of the tests. You took a IQ test. IQ stands for intelligence quotient. And the tests are basically tools designed to measure your intellectual ability and potential. And there's a general scale that goes like this. The average score is 100. And 98% of the people taking the test score below 130. If you get a 135 to 144, it says you're highly gifted. If you get a 145 to 154, the experts call you a genius.

You hit a 154, which means you're at the high end of the genius range. How old were you when you took that test? And did you know what it meant? Well, I've tested between 154 and 164 or 168 or something. I've taken a bunch of them. I mean, I've taken so many of them. The first one was, I think, 158, I think. 158 maybe was the first one.

But I was four, I think, when I took that, or five. Well, I didn't think anything of it when I took it because I was little. I was five. What do I think of it? Nothing. But later on, you must have, at some point, you kept taking these tests again, and you knew you were intellectually gifted at some point. Well, finally, I made my sister take them because the ridiculous thing I thought was that I was the only one in the family getting them.

Like, why don't test the rest of the kids? It's like, it can't be just me. And ultimately, once we were grown, I told my sister, go online and take these tests. It can't be just me. It's ridiculous that they didn't test everybody else. And so she took it and she came off at like 145 or 147. And I was like, see, it's not just me.

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and to make sure you're never disappointed by a beach visit again. Plan the perfect beach trip today by visiting sandy.com. That's www.sandee.com. The link is in our show notes. Stay sandy, my friends. Let's go back to the plays in the driveway when you were a kid. I want to talk about fun, when you started thinking about your future. Tell us about the plays in the driveways, and then at what age did you first think, gosh, someday I want to be in the movie business?

Well, I mean, the plays in the driveway came because I was obsessed with films. And I was that kid because on Saturday, we got all the old movies, you know, with the three channels. We got all these great old movies. And I was just obsessed with these movies. I mean, my face was like four inches from the TV screen. So that was the first argument was you're sitting too close to the TV.

you know, slide back. It was as though something was going to happen to me because I was too close to the television. And my father thought I was just insane because I didn't want to go outside and play. I wanted to see these movies constantly. And I didn't care if it was the black and white detective movies where they're like, we're going to send you to Siberia. You know, I love that. Or beautiful. I just love Barbara Stanwyck. And I thought her movies were so fabulous. And

I loved, you know, the dancing Fred Astaire movies, Gene Kelly. You know, I thought this was all so great. And I really, I mean, I was just obsessed. And so I wanted to start doing these plays. And we had a two-stall garage in the front, barn in the back thing. And so I set up the picnic table. So there was a bench in the front, then the table, and then I put one of the benches on the picnic table. So I thought we had three tiers of bleacher seating.

And then I would make the kids in the neighborhood and my sister be in the place. And I would use, you know, whatever we had hanging around, you know, these fur hats and kitchen towels that I would sew into costumes and these Christmas lights and everything and make one stall one set and the other stall another set. And I would change these sets and put the garage doors up and down. And then I had this little

record player that I would use little pieces of, you know, this beginning of a song or the middle of a song as my little scene set change, you know, music so I could score my plays. I had the whole thing going. I just, you know, I was a full-on director, producer making these plays. By the time I got to Los Angeles, of course, I didn't realize that women weren't allowed to direct and produce.

Until I got here and I was like, are you freaking kidding me? And I did Basic Instinct and I went into the studio and I was like, you know, I would like to have like a really small amount of money to direct a movie. And they're like, get out of here. And I'm like, no, but like we made this really big success. I just want a really small amount of money, like a really small amount of money. I have an idea for a movie and I really can do this. And they're like, leave my office.

I mean, it was like I was coming in there and asking them if I could kill their executive staff. You know, they just thought I was nuts.

We're going to come back to what you did with A Quick and the Dead a little bit later in the podcast. But I want to talk about when we think about how we get going and we start, we all have jobs when we're a kid. You mowed the lawn with a John Deere tractor when you were 10. You stripped and repainted the barn. You sold pots and pans door to door. Christmas cards door to door. Yeah.

Bob's big boy, bus girl and waitress. McDonald's. I think you hit three things there. The fry girl, the shake girl. Four things, a pie girl and the counter girl.

Pool hall in college, short order cook, waitress and manager of the fancy restaurant at the Holiday Inn. How did these jobs... I mean, these are great. They build character and we need to do them. I was a waiter at the Olive Garden when I was in college. I bagged groceries at the Kroger my senior year of high school. These are great jobs to have. They're great character building jobs. What did you learn from these jobs and how...

much of a foundation did they set for your future? Well, life is a service job. It's the way that it is. It doesn't matter where you work. You got to show up on time. You got to have your self together and you got to move it. And the more you move it, the better you do. The more money you make, the more you please your supervisor, the more you're going to get promoted, the less you lip off, the

The better you're going to do, the more you suck it up and do more than your own job, the more you're going to get promoted. What was your favorite of all those jobs? I guess I have two favorites. I loved running the pool hall. I really loved running the pool hall because I liked being the short order cook. I really enjoyed that because I liked talking to the people who came in late at night. And I really liked learning to play pool.

I liked that feeling that like, this is my place and you have to keep it together to be in here or I'll throw you out. I also really liked when I became the late night manager of the Holiday Inn in my college town because the acts that came through to play at the college had to stay at the Holiday Inn. It was the only place to really stay. And so I would get to meet the headliners.

They would come in after the show and I would save food and keep the bar open for them. And so I got to meet really interesting musicians. And then the priest from the town would come in and drink at the bar late at night.

and I would get to sit and talk with him. And I have found throughout my travels all over the world that the theologians, no matter what faith, are always the most highly educated and interesting people to sit and talk to at the end of the night. I want to switch gears for a second and talk about work ethic, which I think is the single most important determinant of our success.

Who taught you the meaning of work ethic and how old were you when you actually took notice of that? Were you thinking, "I can't wait to be successful one day. I can't wait to get going, but I really need this." As part of the answer, can you tell us what a swing shift is? Well, my dad was the hardest working guy ever. In the movie business, we really work hard. When we were young, my dad worked swing shift. Swing shift sucks.

You work first shift one week, which is, you know, you're nine to five or depending on the company, seven to three. It depends on how they run it. Second shift is, you know, that one that's kind of like 11 to seven. And third shift is when you work nights. And my dad worked swing shift, which means you work first shift one week, second shift the next week, third shift the next week, and you keep switching shifts.

You keep switching shifts, which means you're exhausted. You're always exhausted and you never see your family because we are always just fried. And my dad worked an hour away from where we lived. And so he was driving constantly, working constantly. And he worked in a factory where he picked up steel blocks and they put

a blueprint on top of the steel block, and then he cut the die that's now laser cut. But he cut the die, the precision cut, into the die for machine parts, gun parts, car parts, everything, the original die that would make all the pieces that went in your car engine, all the pieces that went in tanks, all the pieces that went in guns. My dad made the original die for all of that.

And so when Laser started, the big companies came to find my dad

to teach them how to make the original dyes. And so my dad was quite a cool dude. And my dad brought up, there was a company in Mexico that wanted my dad to train their employees how to do this. And so my dad brought these three Mexican guys up to teach them how to do this. And there was such racial prejudice there.

in the factory that people were very upset that my dad had brought these Mexican guys up. And my dad made a clear statement that if anybody in the company didn't like it, they could quit their job and he would hire these Mexican guys to take their jobs. My dad was so anti-racism, so hardcore against this and wouldn't permit it in any way, shape or form. He was really great. And he was also a feminist.

which was really crazy in his period to be so hardcore about feminism. But my dad hired the first woman die sinker, which really sent the men sideways. I really got to hand it to Joe. He was quite the forerunner of bringing in people of color and women into a factory business where no one would hire women. So that's a good transition. He...

It was a great role model on the work ethic front. At some point, you're going to start your professional career. Most people wait till they graduate college to start their career. Yours got going during college. Your uncle gave you $100 to enter a local beauty contest. If you won, you got the money to help you pay for college. You didn't win, but a judge noticed you, encouraged you to join

I love the name of this one, the Miss Crawford County Contest. And you did win that one. And it kickstarted your modeling career. How old were you at the time? And at this point, were you thinking you wanted to be a model? Or were you thinking, I'm going to try modeling and this will be a good segue into acting one day? I was, I think, 17 when I was Miss Crawford County. And part of your responsibility is to represent your county in the Miss Pennsylvania pageant. And I went...

I was such a hick, and I went to Miss Pennsylvania. And those girls that enter the big, you know, state pageants are very, very trained and very, very professional.

And sometimes they enter the pageants four or five, six times because they want to be Miss America. I mean, they're really working towards being Miss Pennsylvania. I had won Miss Crawford County, frankly, I think as a fluke. And there I was in Miss Pennsylvania, and I didn't know my ass from my elbow, you know. I had picked a dress for my evening gown that was, I think, quite unlike the

The other girls' dresses were quite beautiful and had the gigantic full ball skirts. And, you know, we're very, I think, beauty pageant style of dresses. And I picked a dress that was like a white sheath dress, quite tailored down, very plain. And it came with a white cape, which, of course, the people told me, you know, you're not going to wear that in the pageant. You'll just wear this plain, very plain white dress, which is still very much my style.

But when I saw all the girls in their sort of big, beautiful, sparkly, fabulous beauty pageant dresses, I was like, oh my God, I so don't have a clue what I'm doing. And you know, you're supposed to gracefully walk down the runway, make a three-point turn, smile and nod to the judges.

do the whole thing and then gracefully come back up, take your place, stand in a very particular way. And I just thought, I'm really never going to win this. This is ridiculous. I am so out of place. So I put the cape on and went down the runway really fast so the cape would fly. And then I just did a big spin so the cape would swoosh out in the back and kind of stopped like, and that's it. And then went back.

And at the end, several of the judges talked to my parents and said, you know what? She's not a beauty pageant girl, but she is a model and she should go to New York and model because she's great on the runway. That leads us to one of the great stories of your career. Let's talk about your mom and her TV habits and the Merv Griffin show.

And the yellow page is in the art of cold calling. Well, when they finally decided that I could go to New York, my mom had seen Eileen Ford on the Merv Griffin show. That just shows you how long ago it was. So she looked up Eileen Ford's

was the Ford Modeling Agency, which was, of course, the biggest thing then, said that we could go to New York. Actually, we went to New Jersey and stayed with my aunt, Gert, who is still alive, and took the bus into New York and wandered around like the hicks that we were and found the Ford agency and just walked in. And God bless Eileen Ford, she saw me and said,

that she would like to throw me down their flight of stairs and bounce the fat off my ass. Now, I was not really fat. I was like a regular-sized kid, but you don't get to be a regular-sized kid. And of course, then, when it was probably, I'm guessing it had to have been like 1978 or 79, when it was like the girls were skinny. I mean, Pat Cleveland was the top runway model.

And this was right, I mean, these were the exact days when Jerry Hall and her friend had met Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Because when I walked into Eileen Ford that day, that's all they were talking about, is that Jerry and her friend had gone out with Mick and Keith. So this was before they married them, before anything, they had just met those. And so this was their big modeling period. So these girls were great.

5'11 and 22 pounds. So I probably look like a ball of dough walking in there. Well, what you did is amazing. And I really want to focus on this for a minute because it's huge for those listening and watching today. You're 21 years old. You head off to New York City and you're going to walk into one of the most successful, famous modeling agencies in the world without an appointment. Basically show up, say, hey there, I'm Sharon and I'd like to meet with

Eileen Ford, I mean, there's a lot of people listening and watching today who may be thinking of a really bold idea, but they're really afraid to go for it. They're really afraid to try it. They're thinking in a million years, there's a negative 0% chance of this ever happening. What's the worst thing that can happen? They're going to say no. You start out with no. If you end up with no, so what? But if you don't try, you're never going to get a yes. Good. So that's...

Say it again. What should people do when the odds are one in a billion? Go get it. Go get it. I mean, my dad had esophageal cancer. They gave him a 3% chance of living three months.

We tortured my father. We told him to wash the car in his tuxedo so he could get some wear out of it. And my dad beat esophageal cancer. Who beats a 3% chance of even making it three months? Who beats it and lives? The people who want to. The people who say they're going to. The people who say, I'm not doing that. I'm not dying.

The people who decide to win, that's who wins. The people who choose to win, that's who wins.

The people who go in and say, I'm going to do this. She's going to throw me down the flight of stairs and bounce the fat off my ass. Well, guess what? I wish someone would because I want to win. If that's what it takes, let's do it. I'll stand at the top. You push. When I was 26, I was a very unhappy lawyer. I want to get out of the law. And I had an idea. I was going to write letters to CEOs of big companies asking for meetings.

And everyone said, people are never going to meet with you. I wrote 300 letters. I got 80 meetings. Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney, Sumner Redstone, who started Viacom. These are themes of in search of excellence. One of the themes is believe in yourself. Anything is possible. So I love your story for those listening. And say thank you. Say please and thank you to everyone who gives you an opportunity.

Call them Mr. and Mrs. Don't think you can waltz in there and start calling people by their first names. Don't think that people don't remember if you don't say thank you or please. It is really important to acknowledge people and let them know that it means something that they had a minute for you.

hand write a thank you note. I hand wrote thank you notes to every single cast and crew member of all my films for as long as I could until my career got so overwhelming that I couldn't. And there were 200, 300 people on every film set, handwritten note to everybody as long as I could. And I'm sure every single person who received one of your notes is still talking about it today when your name comes up in a conversation. And again, that's just

It's great advice. It's great form. And still now, I try to come up with some kind of crew gift so that everybody gets something from me. I want everyone to know that I see you. I see your dragging cable. I see you're out here in the cold and the wet. I see the hard work you're doing on behalf of this film. I get that you're there. I get that you're working.

So you're a successful model now for a few years. You're traveling all over the world. You have some great clients. You're earning a pretty good living. And then you say to yourself, I really want to be an actor. So you go to Hollywood one day and you say, I'm doing that too. You go to Hollywood. How old were you? Walk us through it. Your first audition, how you got it, how many you had before you landed the extra role in the Woody Allen movie. And then as part of the story, tell us about

Cheapo and how he ended up not only being cheap, but how his recommendation really changed your life forever. I've worked with Woody on several movies. I think by now I've worked with him on at least three, at least three movies, if not four. But the first one, I was still modeling in New York when I got cast to be in Stardust Memories. And he was so nice to me. And Gordon Willis was shooting Stardust Memories. And I

I'm sure you know he shot all the Godfather movies and great films. I mean, he's just a great cinematographer. And they said, oh, you know, you really have something. And we had just cast you for a few days, but we keep you on the set for a few weeks if you want to stay. We think you have it. And I was like, of course, I'd love to stay. So I stayed and that really helped me. And then the first assistant director on that show, Michael Pizer,

called me in for two more jobs. And so that's how I got kicked off into working. Then I moved to Los Angeles and I worked around. I did little jobs. I worked on some TV shows, some that didn't, didn't work. And I went through, you know, a variety of different things. Then I think Basic Instinct was my 13th film, 12th or 13th film. No, 18th, maybe 18th film.

that I'd done. And I was having a hard time getting seen, even getting brought in because they were really, they were looking for someone who equated Michael's stature, obviously, which I certainly did not. But I had done Total Recall with Arnold and that had been very successful, though I wasn't, of course, in any position equal to Arnold either.

It was the same director, and I did finally get the opportunity to test. That was a big breakthrough for me, that opportunity to test. And once I got that opportunity to test, I think it took seven or eight months to get cast. Once that happened, then the ball started really rolling for me. Your manager broke into the casting director's office to get the script. Twelve actresses passed on the part before...

you had a chance to go in and read for the part. And as you said, Michael said, I'm not going to read with Sharon Stone. I want to read with someone bigger. Yeah. So how did you actually get the test, which is online, which I saw, which is pretty cool to watch? How did that actually come about? Was that the manager that set that up? And were you really saying to yourself, you're 32 years old at the time, which as sad as it is, that's...

on the older side for a woman wanting to break in as a leading role. That's the way out. If you don't get something by then, you're done. I just said to my agent, if I don't get this part, I'm going to be done. But if you get me in the room, I'm going to get the part. I promise you this. This part is mine. Because I really understood that this part was so much more than the nudity. It was such a complex and difficult character to break

break down and create to produce this part because the part was so complicated. And then the part had to appear to be so uncomplicated that to me, it really reminded me of the way Fred Astaire danced. It was like,

Fred Astaire made dancing look like it was nothing, but he rehearsed eight hours a day. It was going to be that kind of thing where you were going to have to kill yourself to do it, but it had to look like you were just breathing and was really hard. I mean, I had horrendous nightmares. I was sleepwalking while I was doing it. I was just freaked out half the time, but it came off so smooth.

That was, for me, my goal. I achieved my goal. But then everybody thought I was like the character, which, upside downside. The movie's a huge success. It did $353 million at the box office back then. And today, that's the equivalent of $666 million in today's dollars.

And the critics panned it, by the way, but you had the last laugh on that one. You had the Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, so you're probably thinking, F you when that happened. And then Casino comes two years later, and that really puts you on the map. Directed by the great Martin Scorsese, you played Robert De Niro's wife.

This time you're not only nominated for the Golden Globe, but you win it. You get an Academy Award nomination. What was that like? I mean, here you've got back-to-back massive hits. And your acting coach said to you at one point something about Robert De Niro. So talk to me about all that and how good that one felt. He said to me at one point, what's your goal here? And I said, my goal is to be able to sit down opposite...

Robert De Niro and hold my own. That was my acting goal. I mean, to me, of course, I'd done a lot of action movies. I've done a lot of everything, but just to sit face to face with the most, I would say, non-reactive actor, the actor who is the most focused and determined actor who doesn't just

flippantly react to everybody. You know what I mean? He's very thoughtful about his performance. And when I auditioned for the part, he said, you know, my performance depends on you. This is a very different kind of part. This character is very much, his whole behavior is affected by what she does. And I have to count on you. And you have to promise me that you're going to deliver that. And

You know, when you have someone like that say that to you, for me, because I am, I'm a person that really takes direction. Like if you tell me, you know, stand on your head and fart the national anthem, I'm going to figure out how to do that. You know what I mean? I'm not going to go, oh, I don't, you know.

I'm the person that's like, oh, wow, how do I have to, how do I figure that out? So with Bob, I mean, it was everything to me, just everything that I absolutely delivered everything that he needed and everything that was needed for the film. And that my focus was a hundred percent every single second. And I really pushed Marty.

I pushed him and followed him around. He told me I was like a terrier on the back of his pant leg till he finally just turned around one day and it was like, what do you want? And I was like, I want you to treat me like you treat, you know, Marty and Jimmy and Joey. I want you to come in my trailer in the morning and tell me exactly what you want. I want you to push me till you break me. I want you to get everything out of me you can possibly get. That's what I want.

And he's like, really? And I'm like, yes, really. That's really what I want. And he's like, and then he just kind of looked at me like, I didn't really realize that you were up for it.

And I'm like, yeah. And he goes, well, then I'll be in your trailer in the morning. And I was like, okay, how do you take your coffee? And he told me and I'm like, okay. And like, so that night I went home and I knew he was ate a particular way and what he ate and didn't eat. And so I baked what he liked in the morning and I started baking what he liked so that he would want to come to my hair and makeup trailer because I would have what he liked for breakfast ready. Right.

Because I was going to get Marty Scorsese in my damn trailer, whatever it took. Because I was going to make sure that he was going to see me and push me and direct me if I had to stay up half the night baking, whatever it took. So I got him in my makeup trailer. And I got him to talk to me. And I got him to tell me his most magnificent dreams for the character so that I could deliver them.

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And so you worked so hard doing so many movies up to that point. I think at that point you had done something like 30 movies. You get Basic Instinct, then you do Casino two years later, and you're working with one of the best movie casts ever, one of the best director ever, best editor ever, best score ever. One of the best movies ever, by the way. Let's just, we'll call it like it is. It was one of the best movies of all time.

You did a great job in that. But there's a message there to people listening and watching this today, which is you never rested on your laurels. You didn't just sit there and say, I'm here. All right. I belong and I'm going to do this. Here you are. You're proactively asking the best of the best of the best. How do you make me better? Tell me how to get the most from me. I got in the town. I got in the building, but I had to get in the

in the room, you know what I mean? You have to understand that like, I'm not Hollywood royalty. I'm not from here and I'm not part of the machine. And then let's face it, I'm Irish still. So still an outsider. And so you just keep having to break through all the barriers and then you have to keep proving yourself.

And when you're pretty, again, you're probably stupid and you're probably a jerk and you're probably inconsistent and you're probably a diva and you're probably unprofessional and you're probably mean to people. And so you go into every job, not even once you're established that that's not who you are. Every single job, you have to go through this all over again. And

Someone who doesn't get acknowledged will continue to say that's how you are. You are someone that you didn't have time to deal with because you were too busy being professional. There's always going to be these things. So it's a constant. I know some of the biggest movie stars in the world and they're 75 saying, I still got to get in there and fight for it. It's nothing's a given. Nothing ever is a given.

We're going to go quickly through your career, and then I want to move on to a whole bunch of other topics. I quickly want to mention The Quick and the Dead, which finally was your first producer role in 1995. And there's a story here that not a lot of people know about. You wanted Russell Crowe to be in this movie, and the studio said, no fucking way that's happening. Some unknown...

Australian actor that no one has ever heard of. And you put your foot down. He played a skinhead in an Australian movie. What makes you think he's such a great actor? I'm like, he's the Richard Burton of our times. You're just not seeing him. You're not seeing him as an artist. You're seeing only his performance. You're not really seeing him. He's

Richard Burton, you have to see who he is, what he's going to bring. He brings a different type of masculinity than we're used to at this time in film. He brings this very rough, raw, yet weirdly sophisticated masculinity to film. This is very unusual what he's got. It's very special. I promise you, it's very special.

Well, they said no way. You said yes way. And we had to wait two weeks to get him, which was really making people so mad at me. Yeah, but you used your own money to pay for a salary to get him to do the movie? No, it wasn't for him. I used my own money for Leo. Oh, for Leo. Okay, for Leo. Yeah, because Leo, they were like, you know, we'd seen everybody and we saw really good people.

But Leo came in with a sort of vulnerability that, because this is a kid, right? This is a kid who's just at the edge of his manhood. He wants to be a man. He's a kid who wants to be a man and he wants his dad to acknowledge him so much. And his dad's a bad guy. So of course he doesn't gonna acknowledge him. Of course he won't acknowledge him and let him be a man.

He won't introduce him to his manhood because bad guys don't let their sons become men. That is the absolute thing that bad guys won't do. Bad guys suppress their son's masculinity. That's the number one trait of a bad guy. So when Leo came in and he had to audition for the death scene, and of course, Gene Hackman is being so mean to him and

Leo is auditioning and crying and wanting his dad's love so much. And he was the only one of these young men who was willing to show this profound vulnerability and need for his dad.

even in this last moment, to let him be a man. And it touched me so deeply. And I was like, this is the kid. And he's not just the kid for this movie. He's the kid because he's a star. Because only a star is willing to show themselves in this way.

In this way where they will let you all the way in to their soul. And it was so clear to me that like this kid is a gigantic superstar. He has something that is so rare, so, so rare. And they said to me, really, if you want him so much, pay him yourself.

I did it because I was like, you know what? I want more than I want money. I want a really good movie. I want the movie to go forever. And then by the time we got to the soundtrack, because I had hired Sam Raimi, who had only done those movies where the guy with the chainsaw falls through time, which I thought were like a stroke of genius.

But they were like, why do you want this D movie director, Sharon? You're always shooting yourself in the foot. And I'm like, because he's a genius. And so they were really, they were so fed up with me. And then, of course, Sam went on to make Spider-Man, their highest grossing film they'd ever had, as his next film. But they still were mad at me just because, I guess, I was a woman with ideas, which, you know.

Sam went on to do Spider-Man. Leonardo DiCaprio went on to become one of the greatest actors of all time. And Russell Crowe is not so bad. Yeah, Russell's still going on being Richard Burton. And he tells everyone he owes his entire career to you. So it's always great to acknowledge the people who got you there. They're all just, I mean, they're so magnificent. And I got to be in a movie with Leo, Russell, Gene Hackman,

Sam Raimi directing and me producing. And still, people won't give me any money to direct. We're going to move forward on the career. We have so much more to cover. So now we need to talk about one of the best movies you've ever done named Alpha Dog. I don't know if you remember that in your illustrious career, but I'm a hockey- We ended up getting that guy.

Well, I'm a hockey director. That's pretty much what happened. I'm from Detroit. I love hockey. I'm friends with some of the guys who play. And the former, the owner of the Los Angeles Kings at the time, Bruce McNall, owned a movie studio, which was going bankrupt. And he didn't have the cash. He owned the Kings hockey team. He was

He was trying to sell the Kings to Sony, but he basically created false invoices for the coin company that he owned to take out a loan, falsifying the collateral, got caught, went to prison. The team was sold. And Bruce knew everyone in the movie business. People really liked him when he went to jail. People liked him. And my hockey player friend said, you got to meet Bruce when he comes out of prison. I'm a hockey fan and I like movies.

And we became friends. And one night I was at dinner with Bruce and his girlfriend and my ex-wife. We're at Tuscana in Brentwood. And I said, Bruce, what are you up to? And he says, I'm just producing this movie with Sharon Stone and Bruce Willis and Justin Timberlake. And I said, why aren't I in that movie? Ha ha. I went out to go to the bathroom. I come back to the table and Bruce says, you have a casting call at one o'clock. And I said, yeah, right. And my ex-wife looks to me

They said, you really do. He really called the casting agent when he went to the bathroom. And I said, okay, whatever. So I go to this casting office somewhere in Beverly Hills. We have a one o'clock. It's at one o'clock. I go there. There's all these young kids there with scripts, with CAA, William Morris on the cover. They're pacing around very nervously and they're running late. And I'm sitting there thinking, God, it's one o'clock and they're 15 minutes late. There's got three guys to go. I think I may leave. I got to get back to work.

but I stayed and I go and I meet with a casting director who I was in talking to him for like three minutes. Nick Cassavetes walked in. He had just come off the notebook. He was a big deal at the time. This was his next movie. He says, you're a friend of Bruce. Yeah. You like hockey. Yeah. You want to be in the movie? Yeah. And okay, you're in the movie. And I said, just like that? He said, just

Just like that. I said, okay, well, what do I do? He said, we'll be in touch with you. So a couple days before the scene which I was in was shot in Reseda at a house in a neighborhood, he said, come find me and I'll tell you what to do. Meanwhile, I'd never seen the script. I'd never read the script. I vaguely knew the story. The story was about Jesse James from Hollywood who was a middle-class teenage drug dealer from the Valley who's

teenage brother was kidnapped and then later murdered. And they needed a police officer to take a missing person report. So I was a police officer. I went, didn't know where I was, got into a police uniform. I had a gun. They said, make sure the gun never leaves the holster. And then Nick said, come find me on the set. And I'm walking around like

where am I right now? I see Nick. There's 30 people around Nick in the neighborhood. I'm afraid to even go up to him. And I said, excuse me, excuse me. He looks at me sort of like, who are you? And I said, oh, Randy, Bruce McNall's friend. Oh, yeah, yeah, right. And he said, okay, come here. And he said, do you have something to write with? I said, no. And he just shouted out to no one, pen and paper. And someone gives him a pen and paper. He calls over a police officer.

He said, "Okay, what would you say if you're taking a missing person report?" He said, "Name, date of birth, social, what were you last wearing?" I'm furiously writing these down. Okay, we're done with that. And he said, "Okay, go into the house right now and I'll be there at some point." He didn't tell me when. I get into this house and it's basically a family room

And there's 20 microphones, ceiling, and there's people sitting on the couch. They have name tags. I'm on the love seat next to the couch. So you have the couch and then the seat. I'm on the seat. All these people have these name tags on. I'm sitting there 40 minutes saying nothing, chit-chatting with the people next to me. I finally get up and I went to the guy in charge. I said, excuse me, I am missing a name tag. And he said, oh, no, no, no, you're in the movie. And I said...

Oh, okay. And I went back. I sat down. I had no idea what even that meant. I was too embarrassed to ask the question. I'm there for another half an hour. And they said, okay, first team. So I see everyone get up. I'm looking around. And then you sit down right next to me. And I'm thinking, okay, I think I get it. Were you heavier and had black hair?

Well, the uniform was, they certainly didn't fit it to my specs. I got to this trailer and they said, put this on. So it was a little bulky. But if you go back and watch the movie and I can send you a screenshot of. And you had black hair, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not black, but darker brown hair. But no white.

No white hair. Right. So I don't know if you remember what happened or not. Now I remember. But you sat down and you said nothing to me. And I was intimidated, of course. And I kept thinking to myself, my boys back in Detroit wouldn't believe where I am right now, sitting here in Sharon Stone City next to me. And so I'm thinking, God, do I say hi to her? I said, yeah, I'm going to say hi to her. I'm going to be for her. And I said,

Excuse me. Hi, Sharon. I'm Randy. He said, oh, hi. Nice to meet you. And you were just in the zone. You went right back into the zone. No chitchat there whatsoever. And then Nick comes in. Okay, you're ready. Ready. Action. So I've never acted in a play. I've never been on a movie set before. Everyone's looking at me and I'm reading. I said, okay, Randy, read your lines.

and name, date of birth, social, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, cut. What's up? You didn't let Sharon go. I said, oh, okay. So the next thing I know, action, and you're sitting, I mean, we're

three feet apart. And you're leaning forward, and I could see your face contorting. And I wanted to reach out to you, interrupt you. Come on, what are you going to say? And you just blurted out to me, find my son!

It's like, what the fuck? I'm sitting there thinking, like someone just hit me in the head with a hammer. And we had to stop twice because of me because he said, no, no, no, wait, wait for her to answer. Name, date of birth, social. And I'm thinking, I got one more shot and then I'm out of here. Sharon's getting pissed off.

This is not going well. My bucket list is about to die a slow, tortured death here. And finally, the third one and the fourth one went okay. And then Nick comes over to me and he says, and he whispers in the ear, I mean, this is all new to me. And at this point, it's sort of fun. And he says, do you have the ability to piss people off? And I said, what? He said, yeah. Can you piss people off? And I said, yeah. Yeah.

Just ask anybody that I know. They'll tell you I can piss people off. And he said, I want you to forget that you're in stone right now. And I want you to piss her off. I'm looking at him. What? I want you to piss her off. I want you to be an asshole cop. I want you to interrupt her. I want you to cut her off. I just want you to make her mad. I said, okay. So I think we did this for about 20 minutes. Mm-hmm.

I got my bucket list. I thank you for being a part of that. I thank you for not kicking me off of the set and saying, get this guy out of here. And I have to say, I don't like to brag about my residual check, but I did earn $4.31 last year for my residual. Yours are probably a little north of mine, but that's when we met for the first time back in 2005. So we've known each other a while. But you're a real actor now. Not that well.

I'm an actor. You're a real big time actor and you've learned the improv situation. I checked that off the list. It's funny because I'll tell you another funny story about this. We were in a baby group at the time. I had young kids at the time and there's a director who was in the baby group, a well-known TV director. And I'm not going to mention his name. He was recently married a few years ago. They had a child. That's how we knew them. We were good friends. And I tell them about this whole thing. They said, that's unbelievable to me. He said,

only in Hollywood. And he said, you know what? I'm writing this series and there's a part for you that I want you to audition for. And I said, Gil, I have my own company and I have a full-time job, but

It'd be kind of cool. Tell me more about it. His wife went completely crazy. She was a makeup artist on a set. They met. They had a child. They got married. I've never seen a woman yell at her husband more than I did that day. I've been asking you for four years to put me in one of your shows. This guy doesn't...

Doesn't even want to be an actor. He doesn't need to be an actor. And here you're offering to get a role in your TV show. Are you out of your mind? The show didn't get picked up. I never read for it. Lucky for you. They are divorced. And it was a very bad divorce. But it had nothing to do with that conversation. So you say. So I say. We're going to come to...

your challenges and the amazing things that you had to do to come back to where you are. But first, I want to talk about you're rich and famous. You're one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Nobody's rich anymore, honey. Well, this is pre.com. This is pre.com. You were doing pretty well at the time. You're gorgeous. You're rich. You're a

That's everybody's dream at some point. That's your dream. What was it like when it happened? And there's a whole other side to this, too. There's the flip side of, man, I really can't go to the grocery store and be a normal person. When it first happens, it's so fantastic. You're like, oh, my God, it's finally happened. I am famous. I'm the movie star.

Everybody loves me. Oh my God, this is amazing. I can get a seat at any restaurant. I can get tickets to any show. Oh my God, I can call anyone on the phone. This is unbelievable. And then it doesn't go away. And it's horrible. It's the most horrifying, awful thing that ever happened because you can't go out of your house and you can't get in your car and go for a drive and you can't

Just drive over to your friend's house and your friends can't drive over to your house because they can't get in. And there's no going for a walk. And your life as you formerly had it is over. And it's not fun at all. It's a freaking nightmare.

And that doesn't go away. And I joke that it's like Justin Bieber's lonely song because it is. It's just awful.

It's awful to be famous. Everybody thinks they want it. And as Sly says, everybody thinks they want it until they get it. He says, actually, his joke is, it's like VD. Everybody wants to get next to you until they see what they get. And there's some other things to think about, too. I mean, you had stalkers outside your house, I think, too, within a year period. You live in a neighborhood where there's lots of

well-known people. I mean, we live in Los Angeles, so this is the home of movie stars, but... There's all kinds of things that go along with it, and none of it is good news. I mean, you really get over the stuff because the stuff becomes almost stuff you can't even really enjoy anymore. You know, your life changes so radically and so quickly.

Once you get past the dry heaves and the whole shock of it. And I was on Beverly Hills PD. And after about, I mean, it wasn't even a year, maybe six or eight months, Beverly Hills rezoned and zoned my street out of Beverly Hills PD because they didn't want to deal with my fame. And so I bought a house that was in Beverly Hills.

And then they zoned me out because they just didn't want to have to have their police dealing with all the stuff that was happening to me. They actually moved the zone about two feet before my street, which was one of the most shocking things.

I mean, there's shocking police stories, but that was that's one of the shockers when you actually have your police department rezone you because they don't want to deal with helping you. That was really intense because the police department, you get switched to a new police department. It's like, hello, that didn't change my taxes. Yeah.

You've had an amazing career, like all of us, ups and downs, and you've had a lot of downs. And when we talk about our quest

for excellence and our search for excellence and to believe in yourself and to be the best you can be. We all have some immense hurdles to go through. I want to talk about some of yours on the career front and on the health front. You've had a number of them. I'm going to tick off one. When you were younger, you were hit by lightning. The chances of that happening are one in 700,000. And then after total recall- See how lucky I am? That's one in 700,000.

When you did total recall, you had a car accident on sunset. You went home. You didn't realize you had been hurt. You had a concussion, some broken ribs, dislocated jaw and a slipped disc. It didn't slow you down. Dislocated shoulder. Dislocated shoulder, slipped disc.

Then you had the tumor, you had a double mastectomy. And then there's the most serious one. You had a brain hemorrhage when you were 43 years old. And you describe in really just such emotional detail in the book about what you went through. And you talk about the odds of your grandfather, 3%. You had 1% odds at some point. There's a lot to talk about there. And I really want to get to the philanthropy part of your story.

career as well. But can you just talk about your challenges, how you overcame them, and really what your darkest moment was when you're thinking about, gosh, what do I need to do? Am I ever going to recover? And just share that with everybody because look at where you are now. You have a bestselling book. Your career is going great again. You have three amazing kids. I mean, let's just... If you could walk us through that, please.

Okay. You might need golf shoes.

Well, I would like to say, just for any other people who may go through this, the odds are much better now. When it happened to me, these things had just angiograms and all of these kind of things were all really new. And they're not new. And the thing that happened to me, there are new ways to fix it now. They can take arteries out of pigs and arteries out of your leg and transplant them into your neck.

Things they couldn't do and didn't know how to do at the time that this happened to me. So that the odds of surviving what happened to me are higher now, considerably higher. They're not fantastic, but they're higher. I really think that when any of us face these incredible challenges, and these are incredible challenges, and I look at others who face giant challenges. I look at Gabby Gifford.

I mean, what an inspiration she is.

For me, Michael J. Fox was always the person that I really, really look to. The fact that he went through and is going through what he goes through and puts in these unbelievable performances, and they're hilarious, that he is able to face the challenges of his illness and deliver these brilliant, hilarious performances, to me, sets a standard. And I just...

think that you can only take it a moment at a time. It's really like recovering from addiction. Take it a day at a time. I think as we recover from anything, the most important thing that we learn is to stay present. And when I went back to work, and I can say this very specifically, when I went back to work on Ratchet, I went out to lunch with Ryan Murphy.

And he said, you know, that he wrote this part for me. And he started to describe this character that she had a monkey on her head. And the first thing that happened to me is I got filled with panic and dread that there would be an animal on my head and on my neck. And that was so frightening to me because my injury is on my head and my neck. And so he said to me, well, you don't look very excited. And I didn't want him to think, oh, that's the most terrorizing concept I can possibly think of.

what if I hurt my head or neck again? And so I kept throwing things out there like,

what about if we had a leopard? What if we had some kind of like exotic cat? And the whole time I was just trying to manage this panic that I was having and this whole kind of like, oh, like I have to stay in the room and I have to, it's Ryan Murphy and I have to, I'm going to have this part and I have to deal with this and I have to understand that I can do this. And I was frankly just like,

Because without the medication that I take, I stutter. And I'm like, oh, I can't start stuttering now. And I can't panic. I have to like process this. And he's looking at me like, she's so weird. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I am. I am weirder than you even know, dude. I am so weird. You have no idea how weird it is where I've been.

And I'm just thinking, okay, I can handle this. And I'm like, well, you know, we worked with a monkey on another show and that monkey really acted out. And I don't, I'm not sure that's really a great idea. You might, you're going to have to get a really good monkey if we're going to do this because I'm trying to like stay in a logical conversation while having a full-blown panic attack. Like this monkey could hurt my neck and then I'll be Christopher Reeves because if I hurt the other side of my neck, I'll be paralyzed for the rest of my life. Oh my God.

What am I going to do? I'm going to have a logical conversation about this. Let's talk monkeys, shall we? You know, I'm just like trying to like deal with my panic attack, the logic, the monkey, Ryan Murphy, the restaurant. How am I going to do this? I got to get out of here. I got to go home. I got to think about this. I got to handle this. And then to go to work and have this monkey as my co-star, it ended up being the most freeing thing that ever happened to me because

Because this neck and head injury

is the monkey on my back. And I could burst into tears saying it out loud because it is. It's the monkey on my back. I have one vertebral artery. I take medicine not to stutter and see weird colors flying through the air. And I've managed to make it back to be able to put all my sentences together, to be able to speak. I couldn't talk in the beginning.

Couldn't find my cup if I put it down. I couldn't walk without dragging my right leg. And my foot was on the top. I was walking on the top of my foot. I couldn't write my own name for two years. And now I have to put a monkey on my head. And I'm like, don't know if I can do it. And I was like, so freaked out. And he's just looking at me like, what is wrong with her? And so...

My terror was so real and I wanted to just show like I'm okay to work.

Because if you're not okay in this town, they'll drive right over your head. There's not like you can be kind of okay or almost okay or pretty good and we'll compassionately make sure you're okay on set. No, you have to be able to squat down, run a marathon, finish that marathon and then do it again for take two. And then I got to work and I always had to make sure like, I've got it together and I'm fine every day. And look at me, I'm really good. I feel so happy.

I'm happy to be here, you know, but I was freaked out. And then I'd never done a limited series before. I'm a movie star. I'm not a TV star. So I didn't know how limited series worked. I didn't know you got a different director every day and that you didn't shoot episode one, then episode two, then episode three. I didn't know you shot episode one on Monday and episode

three on Tuesday and then episode seven on Wednesday. And then you went back to episode one on Friday. I didn't know that's how limited series worked. I'd never done one. And so by like Friday, I was like, I don't know what's going on. I don't know how this works. I thank God for Sarah Paulson, who was producing it and said, you know what, Sharon, you just have to stay in the day you're in. And then all of a sudden I was like, right, because that's how I've been living.

That's how I've been getting better. That's how when the 10% of my brain that we normally use blew a fuse, I learned how to use the other 90% of my brain. That's how I learned to do what they call in neuroscience a workaround to get around the scarred and broken part of my brain to access other parts of my brain.

and start to work in a new way. And that's how when you lose your photographic memory from over here, you start learning how to learn and then you learn how to remember. And then you learn how to start getting some of that photo memory back. And then you start learning how to work again. And then you start learning how work works again. And then you start learning, oh, this is how you do a limited series.

oh, and this is how you do that. And oh, this is how you do this and that. So the whole of the Ratchet experience was for me, relearning kind of my old job in a new way, in this new format of the digital limited series, while I had something on my head and neck, which was my don't ever touch me there place. So it was daunting.

and thrilling. And then for me, this private, huge accomplishment, which thank God, Ryan shot in my friend's home, a home that I knew like the back of my hand, which I think he did in a really gracious, gracious way. It was such a gift to me because it was a house I'd been in a thousand times. It's a great story of overcoming just incredible odds.

I was so lucky for that specific job and those specific challenges to happen to me. Just in terms of lucky to be alive, but not only did you survive, but you thrived and you did a lot of work to get there. A couple of years, you said it took you to get back. And I just... It took seven years to get all of my walking, all of my talking, and all of my remembering consistent.

And so what's your advice in one or two sentences for those who are listening who are facing difficult medical odds or they're suffering something or the odds are low and they need some encouragement? Faith and grit. You have to have faith. You have to have faith, faith, faith that you called this lesson to you because there's something you need to learn about yourself. And then you have to have the grit and the guts to learn it.

and accept this challenge and go get it. Go get that lesson. Go become the you that you needed to become. Go become the you that is bigger than the thing that happened because there is a you that's bigger than the thing that happened to you. We're near the end and we have to talk about your philanthropy, which I think is the crown jewel of all the incredible achievements you've had in your life. You received, as I mentioned before, the Nobel Peace Summit Award,

which is an award that all the Nobel Peace Prize winners give each year to whoever in the world of culture and entertainment, like the biggest impact in terms of promoting peace. You joined Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 1980 after you learned that your prom date in high school was killed by a drunk driver on his motorcycle. 1984, you got involved in AMFAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research. After you shot a movie in Zimbabwe where you watched two young kids with AIDS, one carrying the other who was mute.

That was 37 years ago, and you've been their spokesperson now for the last 26 years. You started an organization with your sister Kelly called Planet Hope that provides outreach and educational services to the homeless and abused and terminally ill children and their families.

You started Hope for the Holidays, which has given 400,000 toys to children living in homeless shelters. And this is just amazing. Each gift is carefully chosen and wrapped with each child's name on it. You volunteered a halfway house for teenage girls who have been tried and convicted as felons but need to be given a second chance. You started a charity called Homeless Not Toothless, which allows homeless kids and adults to

to have dental care. I mean, Sharon, this is incredible. It says a tremendous amount about who you are. What's behind all of this? And have you ever...

stopped, taken a moment, closed your eyes to think about how many lives you've saved and the kind of impact you've had on tens and tens of thousands, probably hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people? No, but I think the most important thing is that we get asked to do things. And I think we can't do every single thing we get asked to do, but it's important to do everything that we can. People don't ask just to ask.

I mean, of course, there are people that are going to try to take advantage in life. But for the majority of situations, people ask because they need. And while we can't accommodate every need, we can certainly accommodate somebody who's asked us every day. So I try to figure out which person I can help every day. And I just try to ask the universe.

Show me who I can help and show me what I can do and show me where I can be of service. And I just try to be a worthy conduit. I try to be, if I can't do it, I try to line people up with someone who I think can do it.

I'm not always the answer to everybody's issue, but I do know a lot of people and sometimes I'm the right answer. And that makes me feel great that I can say, well, you know, I do know a person for you or I know someone who might know someone for you. I feel like when people are trying to make their life better, that's already someone moving in the right direction. What's your advice to people listening today? I think

taking a step back. I think for all of us who want to achieve excellence, I think giving back is a very important part of that. I think it's, as you said, you feel so amazing when you make a difference in people's lives. But there's a lot of people listening. Yeah, I know there's a lot of good causes. I'm going to write a check. I'll give a little bit of money. I kind of sort of want to get involved, but I don't really know how to do that. And I'm talking about not only kids who are coming right out of college, but people in the

early, middle, and late stages of their careers? What's your advice to people who want to get involved and how they should go about getting involved? And the last part of that is...

How can they get involved with the charities that you're involved with? Well, first of all, there's always room for you somewhere. And if you have money, everybody wants your money. And just make sure that the organization is a registered 5013C. Make sure that they are documented so that you know that the money that you give is going to an organization. And they have to list their standing.

They have to list how much of their money goes to the practical services and how much of it goes to staff. So when you look up their website, look at how they're rated. And then you can see, is the money that you give actually going to the cause or is it just going to the staff? So you can look it up and you can see their rating. So it's really good to look and make sure they're registered. That's one thing. Another thing is,

A little bit of elbow grease is wanted everywhere. So you can go in and you can work at any soup kitchen in your town. You can go in and offer your services anywhere, homeless shelters, just anywhere, Salvation Army, any of these places that they will accept your help to do almost anything. You can wash clothes in your washer. You can give hours to work.

There's so many volunteer positions available anywhere, and you can just look up online, where can I volunteer my time at a charity in this zip code? And you will get some answers. Of course, Planet Hope would love for you to volunteer. We have camps. We need camp counselors. We need doctors and nurses.

dentists and everything because these kids come out of shelters. And the reason that we started homeless but not toothless is because you can actually go to school if you're homeless, but you can't go to school unless you have your teeth checked and you can't get a job if your teeth are falling out. So we needed to make sure people could get dental care.

And so if you can provide dental care or medical care or any kind of care at all, babysitting even, so that women can go to work, you can offer all kinds of support so that people can do the things that they need to do to get jobs and don't have the money to pay people to do so that they can go to work. So healthcare of any kind, childcare of any kind,

tutoring services of any kind. And you don't have to be a teacher to give tutoring services. You just have to be good at it. Can you help a little kid with his homework? Can you teach someone an instrument? Anything. You can offer anything you're good at to anybody. When we're finished with the video, before we put it up on our website, we're going to list all of your charities and put all the contact information up there so people will know how to get involved with

with those charities. They're all amazing causes. Thank you. We've covered a lot today, and I want to end by asking you, is there anything we haven't covered in our search for excellence to reach our potential, to overcome our obstacles, to be the best we can be, and to believe in ourselves that we haven't covered? And what advice do you want to add to what we've already gone over today?

Yes, I would like to say that if you feel you're being abused in any way, it's not a secret that you should keep. There is a thing called teen line that you can call and there are teenagers that will answer your call. If you're a kid or a teenager and you don't want to talk to an adult, call teen line. If you feel afraid and you need to go to a shelter, but you're afraid that your spouse will find out,

There are lines that you can call that will protect you completely where you will remain anonymous. And we're going to put some of these numbers up for you. If there's any kind of domestic abuse and you feel so terrorized that you can't get out and you can't make a call, there are ways that you can call that people can't find out that you've called. We're going to put numbers up so that you will be able to call anonymously and get help.

But if you are in a situation where you are so bullied or oppressed that you can't ask for help, we're going to put up ways that you can get help. And I do want to say, if you feel you can't ask for help, that's the time when you really do need to ask for help. Because if you feel that you're so in danger that you cannot ask for help, please know that this is the time that you must ask for help and the time that you will be helped.

Thanks so much. Sharon, this has been fantastic. I'm so grateful for you, to you for sharing your story today. Look forward to seeing you again. Randy, I'm really honored to be included in this series. You've interviewed some of the most extraordinary people in the world, and I'm just honored and humbled to be among them. Thank you, Randy, and all the good work that you do in the world and everything you've given to the world is hugely meaningful. And you've

You are to be applauded for everything you do. And just knowing you is a part of my bucket list.