Sharon Stone says marriage ended when husband walked out

Sharon Stone says her marriage ended in the room after she decided to pursue a bilateral mastectomy during a frightening health scare in 2001. She describes how her husband walked out when she pushed back, and how the decision ultimately changed once she learn

Sharon Stone remembers the moment like a door closing.

During a Monday episode of David Begnaud’s podcast. The Person Who Believed in Me. the actor. 68. recalled being told she might need a double mastectomy after discovering what she described as multiple “gigantic” tumors in her breasts in 2001. She said the diagnosis triggered a fast, brutal conversation—one that left her ex-husband walking out.

Stone said that after the first diagnosis, she was prepared to move forward. “One of [the tumors] was bigger than the size of my entire left breast,” she said on the podcast. She described a doctor coming to her house and telling her, “Look, we think you should have a bilateral mastectomy. This is really bad. And we usually, when they’re all the way up into here, we know before we go in that they’re cancer.”.

In Stone’s telling, the exchange turned immediately into a fight over control. She said she told the doctor. “I don’t have cancer. ” and that he responded. “You don’t get to decide that.” She then said. “I do get to decide that. But I am deciding that I will have a bilateral, because I’m not f***ing around.”.

She said her husband didn’t accept that. “And my husband said, ‘This is ridiculous.’ And got up and left the room,” Stone told Begnaud.

When Begnaud asked what part felt ridiculous, Stone said it wasn’t the danger. “That I would have a bilateral. He was furious.” Begnaud pressed: “Oh, not that the cancer, if it was true, might kill you?” Stone responded, “No, no.”

The actor described how the doctor addressed the situation directly. She said the doctor told her husband, “If I had more patients like her, we’d have more women alive today. You need to sit down.” Stone said she answered with her own boundary: “And I said, ‘I make the decisions, not you.’”

Stone then delivered the line that frames the entire episode for her: “That was the end of the marriage. That was it. He was done with me,” she said. “It was just over in the room. You could just tell. It was over. He thought I was ridiculous. He thought it was foolish. He thought I was making too many decisions myself.”.

Stone said she didn’t end up going through with the double mastectomy. After learning her tumors were benign, she ultimately chose to have the benign tumors surgically removed during the early 2000s.

She didn’t name her ex-husband on the podcast, but she did identify the relationship. Stone was married to journalist Phil Bronstein from 1998 to 2004, and the couple has an adopted son, Roan, 26. Before Bronstein, she was married to TV producer Michael Greenburg for six years.

Stone has previously spoken publicly about the surgery she did have. In a 2021 interview with The Times. she said that when she woke up from the procedure. she was shocked to learn her doctor had increased the size of her breasts without her consent. “When I was un-bandaged. I discovered that I had a full cup size bigger breasts. ” she said. adding that the doctor told her the larger breasts “go better with your hip size.” She said that when she confronted him. he responded that he “thought that [she] would look better with bigger. better boobs.”.

In her 2021 memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, Stone also publicly revealed that she had multiple “gigantic” tumors and that she discovered they were benign.

What Stone describes on the podcast isn’t just a medical story. It’s a relationship story, too—one in which a health crisis quickly became a fight over who gets to make the final decision, and where the cost of disagreement came fast, in the shape of a husband leaving the room and never coming back.

Sharon Stone mastectomy bilateral mastectomy health scare Phil Bronstein Roan podcast The Person Who Believed in Me