Sharon Stone sits on the balcony of her Beverly Hills home regretting the flirtation is over. “I’ve noticed that people stop whistling when they see you on the street,” says the Oscar-nominated actress for her roles in Basic Instinct and Casino and now the star of Ratched, the Netflix drama series created by Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy, prior to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
‘Whistling and flirting was funny, but it has gone down in history. That time has passed. Stone shrugs gracefully. People are different now. Technology has ended the game of seduction, the personal interaction of your life … It’s something you don’t even see anymore. People no longer flirt face-to-face. And I don’t think it has to do with the fact that you or I are very old, that doesn’t seem relevant to me ».
In the case of Sharon Stone, it is certainly irrelevant. Leaning on a couch with barely any makeup and dressed in a plain white shirt, she is even more handsome than she was when she started modeling before she turned 20. 25 years ago she said: “I suspect people have been doing that for a long time. not sure what to think of me. I looked like a Barbie, but when I opened my mouth my voice resonated as if I had been glued to a bar counter all my life. And he said things they didn’t like. Today’s Sharon Stone has nothing like a Barbie doll, but I don’t think she’s changed too much.
A few weeks ago, the actress uploaded to Instagram a series of grim publications describing the havoc the coronavirus was causing in her family. The disease had killed her grandmother and godmother and hospitalized Kelly, her younger sister and her brother-in-law. “I beg everyone to put on the masks,” he told his followers, who he urged “vote for life,” to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And he concluded by saying, “With women in power, we will fight for families.”
During his own career, he had to deal with toxic masculinity over and over again. In recent years, he’s talked about it when he heard that the word ‘fuckable’ was synonymous with ‘worthy of a piece of paper’ or when he had to work with a director ‘who invited me to sit on his lap in the morning to to listen according to his instructions ».
As he explains, his complaints and objections played against him over the years. “Because I didn’t go through the hoop, I started to build a reputation for being difficult. It was what they said. Sharon is a difficult actress, it is not easy to work with Sharon… ».
Haven’t things changed since then? “I don’t know,” he says with a twisted face. “There are some who continue to patronize women and do you really let that sink in?” He muses out loud. “What I mean is that before there were worse, humiliating situations, but today you have to calculate what kind of aggression you need to get up. Sometimes they are simple details: a look, a tilt of the head. And the best thing is to laugh or leave. But there are times when you have to get up and say ‘I won’t get by that way’ ».
After a career spanning 40 years, two husbands (she was married between 1984 and 1990 to producer Michael Greenburg and from 1998 to 2004 to journalist Phil Bronstein), three adopted children (Roan, 20; Laird, 15; and Quinn, 14) and Sharon Stone had a serious stroke at the age of 43 and learned a few things. The most important: “In life you have to fight for what is really important to you.” “I’d rather not waste time or complicate my life with trifles,” she replies when I ask her if it bothers her that they treat her as ‘precious’ or as ‘sweetheart’. I don’t mind hearing things like that. And honestly, I don’t care if someone hits me on the butt. I just think those things are such a small win … Maybe it’s because I’m 62 and lived so long that I know what really requires my attention.
As tired as she is always talking about the same thing, from one of the movie sequences that led her to hit the ‘pause’ button the most, her crossed legs in Basic Instinct in 1992, Stone doesn’t underestimate the movie that made it famous. “That movie was a sociological turning point,” he says. As always, there is a lot of criticism about it. If you’re brave and you play, if you show your face and do something else, it’s clear they are going to skin you. But it was worth it. Because it has changed the way we see women in movies. The same way of leading women today is another. I don’t think women had a real voice in the cinema until then.
Returned to college at the age of 58
Stone grew up in the town of Meadville, Pennsylvania, the second of four siblings. His father was a worker in a factory; his mother, an accountant. A more than excellent student, at the institute she was repeatedly transferred to higher education. “Between the ages of 11 and 14, I was fascinated by a few women ahead of their time, such as Gloria Steinem. Feminism was alive and well when I was 12, 13, 14 years old … Just when you start asking yourself questions. What are you going to do with your life? I looked at those women and said to myself, I want to be like them!
The fact that Steinem was one of Stone’s personal heroines explains why the actress never felt compelled to choose between sexy and serious. She showed both sides and won the Crawford County Beauty Pageant and a scholarship to Edinboro State University where she studied creative writing and fine arts. However, it wasn’t long before she parked her studies and started working for a modeling agency in New York. At the age of 22, he left that job and made his screen debut as an extra in the Woody Allen comedy Memories (1980). The movie that made her famous was Total Challenge, where she played an undercover cop posing as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife. The nineties were the peak of his career, when he appeared in Acosada, El specialist, Rápida y mortal and Casino, among others. However, these films were not enough to meet their demands.
She soon joined the HIV / AIDS awareness campaign and, over time, became a good expert in the scientific literature on the subject. At the age of 58 he returned to university to finish his studies.
I wonder if her decision to go back to school was a delayed response to the way Hollywood treated her after suffering a stroke with a brain haemorrhage for nine days in 2001. “I noticed that I was suddenly nobody anymore, that I was last in line again,” she said at the time.
Doctors gave him a one percent chance of getting out alive. They operated on her for seven hours and inserted 22 coils into her brain. He was saved, but it took him seven years to recover. “And there were times when I thought I would never be the same again.”
The stroke happened at a particularly difficult time. She and Bronstein were about to divorce; the custody battle over her son, Roan, made the situation even more painful.
If someone had told you that going through such a traumatic situation could help you if a global pandemic broke out one day, you would have ignored it. But, as he emphasizes, in the event of trauma, it is fundamentally changing. And now I have a much more refined sense of reality, which makes me realize that life is turned upside down again. For many people change is very difficult. But anyone who has gone through a heart attack, cancer, or traumatic divorce, to name just a few examples, knows that such situations change you exponentially. And what follows is a new life; you are born again ».
Fantastic Johnny Depp
Sharon stares at the dazzling blue pool at her feet. “I wonder how we will get out after this coronavirus crisis, because now we are all being ‘reborn’ at the same time.”
She is so fascinated with the concept of being born again that she has written a memoir entitled The beauty of living twice, about the two parts of her existence. The release is scheduled for March 2021. “Once your life has taken a similar turn, you will come to understand that the only thing that doesn’t change – if you are strong and stick to it – is the fundamental core of your personality. , your authentic me. Your integrity, the boundaries you set for yourself … it is the only thing you can count on. “
Their opinions have a certain Zen spirit. Or speaking of Johnny Depp’s recent legal vicissitudes – “I’ve known Johnny since he was a kid and he’s a great uncle; thoughtful and thoughtful, very friendly and generous. So I feel like the problem has more to do with that lady “- or when I’m talking about Trump,” In fact, I look at him with empathy. Because it is heartbreaking to watch. I suspect he has childhood trauma. I see and tell myself that these traumas, whatever they are, cause him to constantly torture and hurt himself. What affects the rebound affects the followers he has, those who come to see him with Nazi symbols. They are people with an inner anger that is terrifying, and that anger is born of suffering and feelings of insecurity.
It is possible that Stone also felt insecure in his day, but that does not seem to be the case in this second existence that he lives. He doesn’t even pretend to believe the mantra that ‘looks don’t matter’. “It’s a fool; There is no greater lie, ”he laughs. And by the way: you mainly realize how important the physical is when it starts to collapse. Reason why you follow a rigorous daily exercise program. “I do 30 squats a day and lift ten pound lead balls while watching TV because I can’t go to the gym these days.”