Sharon Stone has mourned the loss of her "adopted grandmother" Eileen Mitzman.
Sharon Stone
The 62-year-old actress shed tears as she paid tribute to the AIDS activist, who has been in hospital battling coronavirus as well as "other illnesses".
Sharon posted the video on Sunday (19.04.20) before Eileen passed away, and said the activist would "die tonight", and Fern Mallis, the creator of New York Fashion Week, has since confirmed Eileen has now sadly died.
In Sharon's video, she said: Hi, I want to talk to you about someone very special to me, who became my adopted grandmother. Her name is Eileen Mitzman. I met her, a long time ago when I was beginning to work as an AIDS activist so many years ago. I met she and her husband Neil in New York at an event at Dr. Krims house.
"She was just about to go and speak to then-President Bill Clinton, and she asked me what she should speak about, and she started to tell me the story of her life. She was a young woman who grew up in Brooklyn and her dad was a bookie.
"He wanted to be a cop but he was too short, and so the cops let him be the bookie because they trusted him then. And she grew up and she told her fellow classmates that her dad was a bookmaker, and they thought that he made books.
"She and her husband Neil met when he was a crossing guard in elementary school. He went away to war and she wrote to him everyday and when he came home he married her."
The 'Basic Instinct' star went on to reveal she began to see Eileen as an "adopted grandmother" after her own passed away, as Eileen herself had suffered terrible loss.
She added: "And they had a beautiful long life together until he passed away a couple years ago. I met her because she and Neil were two of the heads of Concerned Parents for AIDS Research, because her daughter was one of the first daughters to die AIDS.
"Her boyfriend was a bartender at Studio 54. Their other daughter died in a car accident coming home from prom. So I ask them if they would be my adopted grandparents, since mine had passed away. And they became my adopted grandparents and my fellow HIV/AIDS worker."
Sharon then spoke about Eileen's health, and said she would die "a warrior".
She explained: "We worked very hard together to do a lot of good in this world. Tonight she's going to die in New York hospital. She has coronavirus, but she will die because she is septic and has other illnesses and none of us can go there to be with her.
"But she will die a warrior, and I think we should grieve like warriors now because holding grief will only make us sick and affect our lungs and our respiratory systems in a way that we should not allow that to do."
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