Sharon Stone’s ex-husband was ‘done’ with her after she chose life-saving breast removal

Sharon Stone has revealed her ex-husband’s shocking, angry reaction to her decision to undergo a life-saving double mastectomy, which ultimately meant the end of their marriage.

The Basic Instinct icon, 68, was set to undergo surgery to remove benign tumours in the early 2000s, with her doctor suggesting the procedure to remove all of the breast tissue on both sides.

At the time, the Hollywood actress was married to American journalist and editor Phil Bronstein, now 75, whom she had wed in 1998 and divorced in 2004. Together, they adopted a baby son named Roan.

Reflecting on the difficult period, Stone has revealed that Bronstein was far from supportive of her decision. In fact, she claims he was ‘furious’.

Speaking on the podcast The Person Who Believed in Me, she recalled that one of the tumours she had been diagnosed with was ‘bigger than the size of [her] entire left breast’.

‘And the doctor had come out to my house and said, “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“.’

Stone insisted that she knew the tumours weren’t cancerous, defiantly telling the doctor, ‘I don’t have cancer,’ to which he replied: ‘You don’t get to decide that.’

‘And I said, “I do. I do get to decide that. I’m deciding”,’ she shot back.

Opting to be safe rather than sorry, Stone decided she would have the operation, declaring at the time: ‘I am deciding that I will have a bilateral because I’m not f***ing around.’

However, her then-husband ‘got up and left the room,’ saying: ‘This is ridiculous.’

When asked to clarify by podcast host David Begnaud ‘which part’ her husband deemed ‘ridiculous’, she replied: ‘That I would have a bilateral [mastectomy]. He was furious.’

‘Oh, not that the cancer, if it was true, might kill you?’, asked a stunned Begnaud.

‘No, no,’ Stone said, to which Begnaud probed further: ‘He was mad about the breasts being removed?’

‘Yeah,’ said Stone, then revealing how her doctor then expertly schooled him.

‘And so the doctor said to him, “If I had more patients like her, we’d have more women alive today. You need to sit down”.’

She also then fired back at Bronstein: ‘I make the decisions, not you.’

‘That was it. He was done with me then. It was over,’ she stated, adding it was, in fact, ‘over in the room’.

‘You could just tell. It was over. It was just over.

‘He thought I was ridiculous. He thought it was foolish. He thought I was making too many decisions myself.’

In the end, Stone did not undergo a double mastectomy, as the tumours were not cancerous.

She did undergo surgery to remove the ‘gigantic’ benign tumours, though, during which the surgeon, when reconstructing her breasts, gave her larger implants without her consent.

‘When I was unbandaged, I discovered that I had a full cup-size bigger breasts, ones that he said “go better with your hip size”,’ she penned in her 2001 memoir The Beauty of Living Twice.

‘He had changed my body without my knowledge or consent.’

Bronstein, executive editor of The San Francisco Examiner, was Stone’s second husband, following her six-year marriage to Michael Greenburg.

She and Bronstein were unable to conceive, and Stone suffered several miscarriages during the relationship due to an autoimmune disease and endometriosis.

Unable to have children, they adopted Roan in 2000. After the divorce, which was filed by Bronstein, citing ‘irreconcilable differences’, Bronstein was granted primary custody after a highly publicised legal battle.

Then, in 2005, Stone adopted a second son and a third in 2006, going on to live with all three children in California. In 2022, it was reported that she ‘quietly’ adopted Roan’s best friend after his dad died.

On being a single mother to Roan, Quinn, and Laird, Stone said in 2018 that they had ‘such a lovely family dynamic’.

‘I think somewhere in the back of your mind, you think maybe one day you won’t be a single parent,’ she told People.

‘Then, eventually, you realise, I think it’s better. I’m no longer hoping for someone.’