When actor Sharon Stone suffered a stroke in 2001, she was given a 1 percent chance of survival. Her brain bled for nine days and she underwent a lengthy procedure to install nearly two dozen platinum coils to stabilize the torn artery. She survived, but spent the next eight months in bed, and, by her count, seven years recovering. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, published Tuesday, Stone revealed that while she was regaining her health, she also lost $18 million.

“People took advantage of me over that time,” Stone said of her recovery. “I had $18 million saved because of all my success, but when I got back into my bank account, it was all gone. My refrigerator, my phone—everything was in other people’s names.”

“I had zero money,” the Academy Award nominee said.

She also said that the medical close call changed pretty much everything else about her life and how she thinks too.

“A Buddhist monk told me that I had been reincarnated into my same body,” she said. “I had a death experience and then they brought me back. I bled into my brain for nine days, so my brain was shoved to the front of my face. It wasn’t positioned in my head where it was before. And while that was happening, everything changed. My sense of smell, my sight, my touch. I couldn’t read for a couple of years. Things were stretched and I was seeing color patterns. A lot of people thought I was going to die.”

Instead of focusing on the negative ways her life and bank balance had changed, Stone said, “I decided to stay present and let go. I decided not to hang onto being sick or to any bitterness or anger. If you bite into the seed of bitterness, it never leaves you. But if you hold faith, even if that faith is the size of a mustard seed, you will survive. So, I live for joy now. I live for purpose.”