Sharon Stone has nicknamed her fame “Barney” the purple elephant.

The ‘Basic Instinct’ actress, 66, recently told how she feels like she lost her career after she was almost killed by a brain haemorrhage in 2001 – and has now said she uses the term to describe her celebrity as it feels like a huge animal she has to drag around with her in public.

She said at the Hollywood Unlocked Impact Awards at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on Friday (21.06.24), where the ‘Casino’ star accepted the Icon Award: “I call my fame Barney, the purple elephant, and that sometimes I don’t want to go out because I have to take Barney with me, and it can be embarrassing for other people and uncomfortable for me, and make it hard for me to have normal relationships with people in the world.”

Sharon added about being shot into the global spotlight in the 1980s and ’90s:

“I became so famous so fast, and I became so famous in a way that people wanted to diminish me for my accomplishment.”

But she said people didn’t want her to be famous as she “was a woman”, adding: “They didn’t want to give it to me because I was a woman who took a position of power, and then I decided to use fame in a way that I felt had meaning and value.

“And I feel that if you don’t use your fame in an effort to help change the world into a better place, that it’s a wasted thing.”

Sharon tied up her award acceptance speech by thanking people in the audience including the event’s host Tiffany Haddish, as well as Cardi B and Raven-Symoné.

She added: “I just want to say thank you to you, because so many of you in this room have allowed me to feel safe and normal and loved and that I have a place to be.

“When you’re a woman or person of colour or a person who’s LGBTQ, or anybody other than a white man, sometimes makes you feel like you’re less or smaller, when in fact you are the majority.”