Sharon Yvonne Stone (born March 10, 1958) is an American actress,
film producer, and former
fashion model. She first achieved international recognition for her performance in the
erotic thriller Basic Instinct. She was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Actress and won a
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for her role in
Casino.
Early life
Stone was born in
Meadville,
Pennsylvania. The second of four children, she is the daughter of Dorothy (
née Lawson), an accountant and homemaker, and Joseph Stone, a
tool and die manufacturer.
[Cigar Aficionado | People Profile | Sharon Stone][Sharon Stone Biography (1958-)] Stone graduated in 1975 from Saegertown High School in
Saegertown, Pennsylvania, graduating early in an accelerated study program in conjunction with
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school, she briefly attended Edinboro.
As a teenager, she worked at a
fast food restaurant.
[McDonald's Most Famous Employees - AOL Money & Finance]
Career
1970s
Stone won the title of Miss
Crawford County in Meadville. One of the pageant judges said she should quit school and move to
New York City to become a
fashion model. When her mother heard this, she agreed, and, in 1977 Stone left Meadville, moving in with an aunt in
New Jersey. Within four days of her arrival in New Jersey, she was signed by
Ford Modeling Agency in New York. After signing with Ford, Stone spent a few years modeling and appeared in TV commercials for
Burger King,
Clairol and
Maybelline.
1980–1990
While living in
Europe, she decided to quit modeling and become an actress. "So I packed my bags, moved back to New York, and stood in line to be an extra in a
Woody Allen movie," she later recalled. While auditioning, she met
Michelle Pfeiffer, who recognized her from the pageant she competed in, and the two became friends. Stone was cast for a brief but memorable role in Allen's
Stardust Memories (1980), and then had a speaking part a year later in the horror movie
Deadly Blessing (1981). When
French director
Claude Lelouch saw Stone in
Stardust Memories, he was so impressed that he cast her in
Les Uns et Les Autres (1982) starring
James Caan. She was only on screen for two minutes and did not appear in the credits.
Her next role was in
Irreconcilable Differences (1984), starring
Ryan O'Neal,
Shelley Long, and a young
Drew Barrymore. Stone plays a starlet who breaks up the marriage of a successful director and his screenwriter wife. The story was based on the real-life experience of director
Peter Bogdanovich, his set designer wife
Polly Platt and
Cybill Shepherd, who as a young actress had starred in Bogdanovich's
The Last Picture Show (1971), which co-starred Stone's mother-in-law
Cloris Leachman and won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The highlight of Stone's performance is when her cocaine-addict character plays
Scarlett O'Hara in a musical pitched as a remake of
Gone with the Wind.
Through the rest of the 1980s she appeared in
Action Jackson (1988),
King Solomon's Mines (1985) and
Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1987). She was nominated for a
Razzie Award for Worst Actress for her performance in
Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. She also played the wife of
Steven Seagal's character in
Above the Law (1988). She appeared in a two-part episode of
, titled "Echoes of the Mind", where she played identical twins, one a love interest of
Tom Selleck's character.
Also in 1988, Stone took over the role of Janice Henry for the filming of the miniseries
War and Remembrance.
1990–2004
Her appearance in
Total Recall (1990) with
Arnold Schwarzenegger gave Stone's career a jolt. To coincide with the movie's release, she posed nude for
Playboy, showing off the muscles she developed in preparation for the movie (she lifted weights and learned
Tae Kwon Do). In 1999, she was rated among the 25 sexiest stars of the century by
Playboy.
The role that made her a star was that of
Catherine Tramell, a brilliant,
bisexual serial killer, in
Basic Instinct (1992). Stone had to wait and actually turned down offers for the mere prospect to play Tramell (the part was offered to 13 other actresses and considered to 150 women before being offered to Stone). Several better known actresses of the time such as
Geena Davis,
Michelle Pfeiffer,
Meg Ryan,
Melanie Griffith,
Kelly Lynch,
Jennifer Jason Leigh and
Julia Roberts turned down the part mostly because of the nudity required. In the movie’s most notorious scene, Tramell is being questioned by the police and she crosses and uncrosses her legs, revealing the fact she was not wearing any underwear. According to Stone, upon seeing her own
vulva in the leg-crossing scene
[ Caution: image includes nudity. Retrieved 14 June 2006] during a screening of the film, she went into the projection booth and slapped director
Paul Verhoeven.
Stone claimed that although she agreed to film the flashing scene with no panties, and although she and Verhoeven had discussed the scene from the beginning of production, she was unaware just how explicit the infamous shot would be.
[ContactMusic.com Stone Tricked Into Controversial Basic Instinct Scene] She said, "I knew that we were going to do this leg-crossing thing and I knew that we were going to allude to the concept that I was nude, but I did not think that you would see my vagina in the scene. Later, when I saw it in the screening I was shocked. I think seeing it in a room full of strangers was so disrespectful and so shocking, so I went into the booth and slapped him and left."
[ContactMusic.com Stone Attacked Basic Instinct Director Over Vagina Shot][Stone Ready to Bare All...Again. FilmStew Staff Report, FilmStew.com. 13 March 2006. Retrieved 17 April 2006.]
Despite this, she claimed in an earlier interview that "it was so fun" watching the film for the first time with strangers.
Verhoeven has denied all claims of trickery and said, "As much as I love her, I hate her too, especially after the lies she told the press about the shot between her legs, which was a straight lie".
[Movie & TV News @ IMDb.com - WENN - 23 August 2000] Screenwriter
Joe Eszterhas, who later befriended the actress, also claimed the actress was fully aware of the level of nudity involved in his
memoir,
Hollywood Animal.
Following this film, she was listed by
People as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world.
In 1992, photographer
George Hurrell took a series of photographs of Stone,
Sherilyn Fenn,
Julian Sands,
Raquel Welch,
Eric Roberts and
Sean Penn. In these portraits he recreated his style of the 1930s, with the actors posing in costumes, hairstyle and makeup of the period.
In November 1995, Stone received a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6925 Hollywood Blvd. That same year,
Empire chose her as one of the 100 sexiest stars in film history. In October 1997, she was ranked among the top 100 movie stars of all time by
Empire.
In 1995, she received a
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Dramatic Motion Picture for her role as "Ginger" in
Martin Scorsese's
Casino opposite
Robert De Niro. She also earned an
Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the role.
In 2001, Stone was linked to a biopic of the German film director
Leni Riefenstahl. The prospective director
Paul Verhoeven and Riefenstahl herself favoured Stone to portray Riefenstahl in the film. According to Verhoeven, he discussed the project with Stone and she was very interested. Subsequently, Verhoeven pulled out of the project as he wanted to hire a more expensive screenwriter than the producers did.
[Will Jodie Whitewash Leni? The Nation. 15 March 2001][Hollywood tackles Hitler's Leni The Guardian. 29 April 2007]
Stone was hospitalized in late 2001 for a
subarachnoid hemorrhage, which was diagnosed as a
vertebral artery dissection rather than the more common ruptured
aneurysm, and treated with an
endovascular coil embolization.
Stone starred opposite actress
Ellen DeGeneres in the 2001
HBO movie
If These Walls Could Talk 2, in which she played a
lesbian trying to start a family. In 2003, she appeared in three episodes from the eighth season of
The Practice. For her performances, she received an
Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.
2004—
Stone attempted a return to the mainstream with a role in the film
Catwoman (2004); however, the film was a critical and commercial flop.
After years of litigation,
Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction was released on March 31, 2006. A reason for a long delay in releasing the film was reportedly Stone's dispute with the filmmakers over the nudity in the movie; she wanted more, while they wanted less. A
group sex scene was cut in order to achieve an R rating from the
MPAA for the U.S. release; the controversial scene remained in the U.K. version of the
London-based film. Stone told an interviewer, "We are in a time of odd repression and if a popcorn movie allows us to create a platform for discussion, wouldn't that be great?"
[Sharon Stone sought "brazen" nude scenes. KP International. March 2006. Retrieved 17 April 2006.]
Despite an estimated budget of $70 million, it placed only 10th in gross on its debut weekend with a meager $3,200,000, and was subsequently declared a bomb.
[Tatiana Siegel. Erotic thrillers lose steam at box office. The Hollywood Reporter. 3 April 2006. Retrieved 17 April 2006.] It ultimately ran in theaters for only 17 days and finished with a total domestic gross of under $6 million. Despite the failure of
Basic Instinct 2, Stone has said that she would love to direct and act in a third
Basic Instinct film.
She appeared in the drama
Alpha Dog opposite
Bruce Willis, playing Olivia Mazursky, the mother of a real-life murder victim. Stone wore a
fatsuit for the role.
In February 2007, Stone found her role as a
clinically depressed woman in her latest film,
When a Man Falls in the Forest, uplifting, as it challenged what she called "
Prozac society." "It was a watershed experience," she said. "I think that we live in a... Prozac society where we're always told we're supposed to have this kind of equilibrium of emotion. We have all these assignments about how we're supposed to feel about something."
["Sharon Stone Film Challenges 'Prozac Society'" Reuters, February 12, 2007.]
In December 2006, she co hosted the
Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway together with Anjelica Huston. The concert was in honor of the Nobel Peace Prize winners
Muhammad Yunus and
Grameen Bank.
[Nobel Peace Prize Concert]
In 2007, she appeared in a television commercial demonstrating the symptoms of a
stroke.
[I am a stroke video - Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada]
Personal life
Stone lives in
Beverly Hills, California, and owns a ranch in
New Zealand. In March 2006, Stone traveled to
Israel to promote peace in the
Middle East through a press conference with
Nobel Peace Prize winner
Shimon Peres.
[Sharon Stone talks about peace, her naked body, and Jews in her employ.. Defamer. 14 March 2006. Retrieved 17 April 2006.] Stone also has
diabetes and loves raspberries .
AIDS research support
In April 2004, she was awarded the
National Center for Lesbian Rights Spirit Award in
San Francisco for her support and involvement with organizations that serve the
lesbian,
gay and
HIV/
AIDS community
and performed
Can't Get You Out of My Head with
Kylie Minogue in
Cannes for
AIDS research. She was presented the award by
San Francisco Mayor
Gavin Newsom.
It has been said that her parents raised her with
feminist values. "My dad never raised me to believe that being a woman inhibited any of my choices or my possibilities to succeed. To be a feminist like Dad in that
blue-collar,
middle-class world is a big stand."
Tanzania controversy
On January 28, 2005, Stone helped solicit pledges for $1 million in five minutes for mosquito nets in
Tanzania,
["Sharon Stone raises $1 mil. for Tanzania in 5 minutes", Daily Yomiuri, January 30, 2005.] turning a panel on
African
poverty into an impromptu fund-raiser at the
World Economic Forum in
Davos,
Switzerland. Many observers, including
UNICEF, criticized her actions by claiming that Stone had reacted instinctively to the words of
Tanzanian President
Benjamin Mkapa, because she had not done her research on the causes, consequences and methods of preventing
malaria; if she had done so, she would have found out that most African governments already distribute free bed nets through public hospitals.
Of the $1 million pledged, only $250,000 was actually raised. In order to fulfill the promise to send $1 million worth of bed nets to Tanzania, UNICEF contributed $750,000. This diverted funds from other UNICEF projects. According to prominent economist
Xavier Sala-i-Martín, officials are largely unaware of what happened with the bed nets. Some were delivered to the local airport. These reportedly were stolen and later resurfaced as wedding dresses on the local
black market.
Chinese earthquake controversy
Stone sparked criticism for her comments made in an exchange on the red carpet with
Hong Kong's
Cable Entertainment News during the 61st Annual
Cannes Film Festival on May 25, 2008. When asked about the
2008 Sichuan earthquake she remarked:
"Well you know it was very interesting because at first, you know, I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. And so I have been very concerned about how to think and what to do about that because I don’t like that. And I had been this, you know, concerned about, oh how should we deal with the Olympics because they are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine. And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that Karma? When you're not nice then the bad things happen to you?"[[1] ][YouTube - Sharon Stone calls China quakes "karma" for tibetans]
Observers have also noted that
Wenchuan County, the epicenter of the earthquake, is located in
Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, where ethnic
Tibetans comprise over half of the population. According to the
Hollywood Reporter, after her comments, one of China's biggest cinema chains released statements stating its company would not show her films in its theaters.
The founder of the UME Cineplex chain and the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, Ng See-Yuen called Stone's comments "inappropriate" and said the UME Cineplex chain would not be releasing her films in the future.
advertisements featuring Stone's image were also dropped from all ads in China amid the public uproar.
Stone was also struck from the
2008 Shanghai International Film Festival guest list, with the event's organizers considering a permanent ban for the actress.
[Sharon Stone not welcome at Shanghai film fest: organisers]
Dior China had originally posted an apology in Stone's name, but Stone later denies making the apology during an interview with the
New York Times, saying "I'm not going to apologize. I’m certainly not going to apologize for something that isn’t real and true — not for face creams," although she does admit she had "sounded like an idiot".
The
Dalai Lama has reportedly distanced himself from her.
[AFP: Dalai Lama baulks at Sharon Stone's 'karma' quake remark]
Religion
In the early 1990s, Stone became a member of the
Church of Scientology. Stone remained with the religion until recently when she converted to
Tibetan Buddhism, after fellow actor
Richard Gere introduced her to the
Dalai Lama.
[Sharon Stone-Balancing Religion and Acting, Buddha and God] She is an ordained minister with the
Universal Life Church.
[ChicagoScope Podcast]
Relationships
She was first married briefly to George Englund Jr., but she left him for television producer Michael Greenburg. In 1984, she broke up Greenburg's marriage; he became her second husband. The marriage lasted three years.
She married Greenburg in 1984 on the set of
The Vegas Strip War, a TV movie he produced and she starred in, along with
Rock Hudson and
James Earl Jones. They separated three years later, and their divorce was finalized in 1990.
[
Stone KV.jpg|thumb|right|240px|Stone in [[Karlovy Vary International Film Festival], 2005]]
On February 14, 1998, she married
Phil Bronstein, executive editor of the
San Francisco Examiner and later
San Francisco Chronicle. Stone and Bronstein were divorced in January 2004. They have an
adopted son named Roan Joseph Bronstein, born on May 22, 2000. She also adopted her second son, Laird Vonne Stone on May 7, 2005. On June 28, 2006, Stone adopted her third son, Quinn Kelly.
In 2005, during a television interview for her movie
Basic Instinct 2, Stone hinted an interest in
bisexuality, stating "Middle age is an open-minded period".
[Sharon Stone promises "lesbian love" in Basic Instinct 2. AP. 25 February 2006. Retrieved 17 April 2006.] Stone has said that in the past she's "dated" girls. While filming
Basic Instinct, her best girlfriend was there to hold her hand out of camera range during some of the scenes. And in a biography,
Naked Instinct, author Frank Sanello details a sexual liaison between Stone and a woman in the bathroom of the
Beverly Hills Hotel.
[Planetout.com Retrieved September 20, 2007] In an interview on the
Michael Parkinson talk show in England on March 18, 2006, she said she was "
straight". However, in January 2008, she was quoted as saying, "Everybody is bisexual to an extent. Now men act like women and it's difficult to have a relationship because I like men in that old-fashioned way. I like masculinity and, in truth, only women do that now".
[[2] Stone tempted to date women, keyetv.com, retrieved 11 January 2008]
Filmography
