“They threatened me repeatedly, they threatened my life,” Sharon Stone has said in an interview discussing her AIDS activism, when she replaced her friend Elizabeth Taylor in 1995 at the famous annual fundraiser at the Festival of Cannes cinema. “I had some pretty big shoes to fill after Elizabeth Talyor on amfAR,” she recounted during Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival.
The actress added that her publicist warned her that if she fought for HIV research she would sacrifice her job. “She told me: If you do this, it will destroy your career. At that time you were not allowed to talk about AIDS. I said, ‘I know, but I’m going to do it, you’re going to kill me.’”
Despite this, Stone decided to continue and promised to accompany the campaign until the drugs were found. “I had no idea of the resistance, cruelty, hate and oppression we would face. So, I put on a hazmat suit and asked them to show me (the virus) under a microscope. I thought I really needed to see this thing that’s driving everyone crazy.”
However, she acknowledged that it was difficult for her to stop receiving contracts as an actress.
“I stayed for 25 years until we had ads for AIDS remedies on TV like we had aspirin. It destroyed my career. I didn’t work for eight years. I was told that if I ever talked about condoms again the funds would be removed. They threatened me with death several times and I decided that I had to move on. Now 37 million live with HIV and can do it in a healthy way”.
Although the situation has changed, the actress recalled that 40 million people died of AIDS before antiretroviral drugs were introduced. Beyond the information about the disease, Stone also spoke about human rights that are still neglected in countries like Saudi Arabia where homosexuality and bisexuality continue to be taboo.
“The actress said she needed to see the country for herself before passing judgment, even if others around her questioned the trip,” Deadline commented. “Everybody said: ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ I’m afraid of not knowing. I’ll go see what it really is and then I’ll tell you. What everyone says is not necessarily how it is. You have to see things for yourself.”
For Stone, winner of the Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for ‘Casino’, traveling to that country was a pending issue. “I was a girl from Pennsylvania, I grew up with the Amish, who would drive up my driveway with her buggy. There was no way I was coming to Saudi Arabia. This is a big problem for me,” added the 64-year-old actress who is battling a fibroid tumor after receiving the wrong treatment.
“Another misdiagnosis and another wrong procedure. And with a double epidural. After the pain worsened, I decided to get a second opinion: I have a large fibroid tumor that needs to be removed, ”she wrote on her Instagram account, where she has 3.5 million followers.
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