That was the moment, June 6 -- The room went silent before it was over. Sharon Stone had just told her husband she intended to have a bilateral mastectomy. He stood up and left.

she was married to journalist Phil Bronstein from 1998 to 2004, and the cancer scare unfolded in the months after her near-fatal subarachnoid hemorrhage in September 2001.

Doctors had discovered tumors in her breasts while treating her in the aftermath of the stroke. The largest, she told Begnaud, was bigger than her entire left breast. A physician had driven to her home to deliver the recommendation personally.

Stone recalled the conversation: the doctor told her the size and position of the growths meant cancer was almost certain before they even opened her u...