Warning: This article contains discussion of child abuse which some readers may find distressing.
Sharon Stone has spoken candidly about the emotions she experienced when her abusive grandfather died.
The 68-year-old actor reflected on the subject during an appearance on the All There is Anderson Cooper podcast, where she discussed the lasting impact his death had on her. Stone has long revisited that experience in interviews and in her 2021 memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, in which she described feeling both release and a profound emotional void after his death.
Stone had already addressed those feelings in her 2021 memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, writing that his death brought a sense of ‘glee and relief and emptiness’.
During the conversation, Cooper read aloud a passage from the book in which Stone described her first encounter with death.
“It’s a very weird thing when you’re a kid and the first experience you have of death is glee and relief and emptiness.”
Stone was 14 when her grandfather died, while her younger sister was 11.
She described her grandfather in stark terms as she recalled the abuse her family endured.
“He was an abuser who abused my mom and did everything he could possibly do to get near us to be abusive of us,” said Stone.
“And he was not a grandfather, he was a creature that we tried to avoid at all costs.”
Looking back on the funeral, Stone said she did not feel the kind of tenderness or sorrow that might normally be expected in that setting.
She remembered standing by the coffin with her sister, who wanted reassurance that he was truly gone.
“Are we sure he’s dead?”
Stone said her sister then asked her to make certain for herself.
“I reached in and shoved him in the shoulder, and he was stiff and didn’t move, and I went, ‘Yeah.’
“And I think I said, ‘It’s over.’ And I think we still backed off.”
She said that moment has remained with her ever since.
“It will be a picture in my mind forever of that weird sense of emptiness — good emptiness. It’s over.”
Stone and her sister publicly shared details of the sexual abuse they suffered in 2021 during an interview with the New York Times.
At the time, they explained that they had chosen to tell their story together.
“made this decision together”
Stone also spoke then about her mother’s initial response after learning what had happened.
“the whole pious, horrified, I-don’t-really-want-to-talk-about-it-directly kind of thing.”
She later said her mother eventually had a “major breakthrough” after Stone’s sister confronted the issue directly.
Stone’s mother, Dorothy Marie Stone, died in 2025 at the age of 91, and Sharon later said she needed time to process the loss before speaking publicly about it. In 2026, she also reflected on the complicated emotions surrounding that death, saying she needed to “let go”.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues or want to speak to someone in confidence regarding the welfare of a child, the Childhelp USA National Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453) operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and receives calls from throughout the United States, Canada, US Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico.