Sharon Stone recalls losing custody of son after starring in Basic Instinct: ‘It broke my heart’

Sharon Stone has shared the impact her role in 1992’s Basic Instinct had on the custody battle over her eldest child.

Stone shared son Roan with ex-husband Phil Bronstein but after a lengthy and turbulent divorce battle in the early 2000s, he was awarded primary custody of their son, who was just eight at the time, while she was granted visitation rights.

In a new interview on iHeartPodcast Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi, the 64-year-old actress claimed she lost custody of Roan, now 22, due to being unfairly judged over the sexual content in the flick.

She shared: “I lost custody of my child.

“When the judge asked my child – my tiny little boy, ‘Do you know your mother makes sex movies?’ This kind of abuse by the system, that it was considered what kind of parent I was because I made that movie.”

The Casino star continued: “People are walking around with no clothes on at all on regular TV now and you saw maybe like a sixteenth of a second of possible nudity of me – and I lost custody of my child.”

Stone said that losing custody of her child off the back of her appearance in the erotic thriller was not only emotionally devastating but had a major impact on her health.

She recalled: “I ended up in the Mayo Clinic with extra heartbeats in the upper and lower chambers of my heart. It broke my heart."

The Oscar-nominated star adopted Roan with Bronstein in 2000, four years before their divorced was finalised.

In 2008, Stone lost her appeal to gain primary custody of Roan.

Despite this, the pair share a close bond and in 2019, Roan filed papers to add “Stone” to his name.

Stone went on to adopt two more sons: Laird, 17, and Quinn, 16, in 2005 and 2006 respectively.

It’s not the first time the star has spoken out about the difficulties of working on Basic Instinct.

Speaking to The New Yorker in 2021, she recalled how making the film “was taking a toll on everybody”.

She shared: “[Paul] Verhoeven [director] ended up in the hospital – his sinus thing ruptured, and he couldn't stop having a nosebleed. There was tremendous pressure on that set.

“Now people walk around showing their penises on Netflix, but, in the olden days, what we were doing was very new. This was a feature film for a major studio, and we had nudity, sex, homosexuality, all these things that, in my era, were breaking norms.”