Name: The Beauty of Living Twice
ISBN: 9780525656760

Sharon Stone

The Nobel Peace Summit Award-winning actress, activist, and humanitarian chronicles her efforts to recover and rebuild after a massive stroke, discussing how her health challenges were also shaped by industry standards, childhood traumas, and family bonds.

The Beauty of Living Twice

Sharon Stone, one of the most renowned actresses in the world, suffered a massive stroke that cost her not only her health, but her career, family, fortune, and global fame. In The Beauty of Living Twice, she chronicles her efforts to rebuild her life, and the slow road back to wholeness and health. In an industry that doesn't accept failure, in a world where too many voices are silenced, Stone found the power to return, the courage to speak up, and the will to make a difference in the lives of women and children around the globe. Over the course of these intimate pages, Stone talks about her pivotal roles, her life-changing friendships, her worst disappointments, and her greatest accomplishments. She reveals how she went from a childhood of trauma and violence to a business that in many ways echoed those same assaults, under cover of money and glamour. She describes the strength and meaning she found in her children, and in her humanitarian efforts. And ultimately, she shares how she fought her way back to find not only her truth, but her family's reconciliation and love. Stone made headlines not just for her talent and beauty, but for her candour and her refusal to "play nice," and it's those same qualities that make this memoir so powerful. The Beauty of Living Twice is a book for the wounded, and a book for the survivors; it's a celebration of women's strength and resilience, a reckoning, and a call to activism. It is proof that it's never too late to raise your voice, and speak out.

Fraser Simons

“It would be fair to say I fucked myself.” 

This year I’ve read more celebrity memoirs than I have ever in my dang life. I picked this one up because I remember seeing a tweet by Sharon Stone where she was pretty much just begging people to realize that Covid was not hypothetical bullshit and she’s putting people in the ground because of it. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember it was desperate and full of rage. My library recommended this to me and I instantly recalled that tweet. 

It opens with Stone talking about her having a stroke and what it was like to bleed into your brain and your face. Then have a doctor advocate for an extremely dangerous procedure that would probably kill you, had not a nurse speak up with an alternative, allowing her to fire her doctor and buy time enough to figure out what was happening. It turns out she needed to have some kind of spinal surgery, relearn how to walk, and get back the use of her short term memory. They found that out eventually because she begged her best friend, telling her that she felt like she was dying, to convince them to take another shot at a diagnosis by using a microscopic camera that was moved up to her brain stem, which was disintegrating, or something?

That’s how this thing starts, okay. 

It ends with Sharon Stone, for maybe the fourth time, reiterating how much victims of sexual assault and abuse need solidarity and compassion and help and closes it out with hot line numbers. 

In between she talks about things like being told she wasn’t fuckable enough at 34 to make it in the business 6 months before she started in Basic Instinct. Or how her producer told her on another set to fuck her co-star because then they’d have good on screen chemistry. She told him, and others, that if fucking a shitty actor to make him an _okay_ one, she suggested they all go fuck him themselves and leave her out of it. 

That’s around the time she says it would be fair to say she fucked herself. She reported people who harassed her and others, reported people who showed up drunk or high or ill prepared, and when she was asked to do things she didn’t want to do, she said ‘no’. 

That doesn’t even go into her personal loss and abuse. It’s a pretty heavy book. I wasn’t expecting it, to be honest. She laughs at herself as well, it’s not all tears. Saying she repeatedly has put her foot in her mouth but continues to grow and learn. 

I think, because I listened to it on audio, this hit in unexpected ways. Usually memoirs like this are read sort-of without emotion, or by someone else, and it almost always is worse than just reading the book. However, Stone narrates this incredibly well. She doesn’t try to control her voice. You can tell she is about to lose it as her voice warbles or pauses. Turns out she can deliver lines extremely well. Who knew?

Lauren Attaway

A series of peeks into Sharon's life, though I would have much preferred to hear more about the work behind-the-scenes. A celebrity book doesn't have to be tell-all regarding other celebs if they are sharing it all on their work.