Sharon Stone has revealed that she was pressured by various producers over the course of her career to have sex with male co-stars. The Oscar-nominated star, who rose to fame in filmmaker Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 thriller, Basic Instinct, became known as a sex symbol as a result of that film’s success and has most recently been seen in TV series, Ratched.
Despite a lengthy early career based mainly in television throughout the 1980s, Stone was far from a household name. Even a small part alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall didn’t boost her profile to any major extent. However, once Basic Instinct arrived in theaters, it signaled not only a new level of acclaim for Stone, but also a new direction for cinema in general. Verhoeven had long since acquired a reputation for bringing risqué elements into his films, but as a Dutch director, his European filmmaking style was something quite new for audiences, particularly in America. Basic Instinct was filled with sex and nudity, and received the highest degree of attention for one scene in particular involving Stone. While being interrogated for murder by the police, Stone’s character, Catherine Tramell, uncrosses her legs to briefly reveal that she isn’t wearing any underwear.
According to Variety, Stone has revealed in her upcoming memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, that in addition to being tricked into the aforementioned scene, she was also asked on several occasions by male producers to have sex with her male co-stars. The excuse given by these producers was reportedly that it would increase the onscreen chemistry between Stone and her male co-stars. Stone does not name the producers she accuses with this gross abuse of power, and by refusing to have sex with her co-stars, she was deemed “difficult." Read what Stone wrote regarding the situation below:
I felt they could have just hired a co-star with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines. I also felt they could fuck him themselves and leave me out of it. It was my job to act and I said so. This was not a popular response. I was considered difficult.
Over the past several years in particular, the degree of sexual assault and sexism in the entertainment industry has become a major talking point. The #MeToo movement clearly played a substantial part in this, but these crimes did not just begin in the latter part of the past decade. Instead, actresses such as Stone were dealing with what was once just considered the nature of the industry. At one point in her memoir, Stone also references Ava Gardner - an acclaimed film star throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s - and realizes that she, too, was dealing with a male-dominated industry that often took advantage of its actresses.
It’s tempting for some to say that with the arrival of #MeToo and the imprisonment of serial rapists, Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, that things are really changing for women in Hollywood. Sharon Stone’s allegations are sure to help shed further light on what women are subjected to as actresses, but much work still needs to be done to weed out those who are guilty of, and facilitate these crimes.
Source: Variety