Sharon Stone Opened Up About Her 20-Year Absence From Hollywood

In May 2023 Stone gave an emotional speech at The Hollywood Reporter’s Raising Our Voices event about her rollercoaster journey. "Something went wrong with me," she said. "I've been out for 20 years. I haven't had jobs. I was a very big movie star at one point in my life." That is an understatement, of course. But even before she was racking up award nominations, young Sharon Stone was known for more than just her beauty. Born March 10, 1958, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, she was extremely gifted in school. And her natural aptitude for learning only went from strength to strength as she got older.

It's been reported that she has an IQ of 154, which would rank her among the top two percent of people in the world. To put it into context, that's a mere six points off of Stephen Hawking — the English physicist famous for his pioneering theories of, well, everything. And her high IQ hasn't gone to waste — Stone finished high school before she hit the age of 16. And in later life, she served as the Global Campaign Chair for the Foundation for AIDS Research.

Following high school, too, she made it into Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. But, noticing that she had both beauty and brains, her nearest and dearest had a proposition for young Stone. Before long, and with the encouragement of her friends and family, the world of beauty pageants came calling. To her surprise, Stone earned the title of Miss Crawford County and almost went on to compete for the state title. But that was only the start of her plan for world domination.

Given her natural good looks and charming demeanor, Stone didn't go unnoticed in the pageant world. In fact, one of the judges advised her to leave school behind and pursue a career in modeling in New York City. And as it happens, that was all it took. Stone took his advice, and in 1977 she was signed by Ford Modelling Agency. The wheels of her career were starting to spin. As you'd expect, Stone took to modeling like a duck to water.

And despite being new to the world of fashion, her career as a model quickly saw her talent taking her to international locations such as Milan and Paris. Eventually, however, her ambitions changed. "I packed my bags, moved back to New York, and stood in line to be an extra in a Woody Allen movie," she recalled. But she actually earned a small role in the Allen flick Stardust Memories — and even went on to work with the now-problematic director on two other occasions.

Before long, then, the budding starlet scored a few more bit parts in semi-successful films. There was Irreconcilable Differences in 1984, King Solomon's Mines in 1985, and even the Steven Seagal movie Above the Law in 1988. Stone was also appearing in roles in hit TV shows such as Magnum P.I. and T.J. Hooker. But, just like in her modeling days, Stone probably knew there had to be more than — as critic Peter Travis put it in Rolling Stone — "being the bright spot in too many dull movies."

And, as fate would have it, 1990 opened up an unmissable opportunity. Finally breaking onto the film scene in a major way — and fully cementing herself as a star to be reckoned with — came when she was cast in the high-energy action film Total Recall. And after starring alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in the sci-fi movie, she went on to star in five more feature films the next year. By this point, it was almost inevitable that "Sharon Stone" would become a household name.

In 1992 she landed a star-making role in Basic Instinct. This turned out to be both a gift and a curse for the young actress. Catherine Tramell was Stone's most iconic — and most controversial — casting. A role that was both contentious and apparently deeply traumatic. In fact, she wrote in her memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, that the film almost broke her: "It was terrifying. I had walked in my sleep three times during production, twice waking fully dressed in my car in my garage. I had hideous nightmares."

Given the racy script that called for plenty of nudity, a number of actresses turned down the role that Stone bravely took on. The New York Times reported that Michelle Pfeiffer, Kim Basinger, Geena Davis, Ellen Barkin, and Mariel Hemingway all rejected the part precisely because it involved so much sex. But there was one scene that would prove to be the infamous moment of '90s pop culture: Catherine Tramell crossing and uncrossing her legs. There has been a debate raging about this moment ever since.

In her memoir, Stone insisted that, while making the movie, the filmmakers told her, "We can’t see anything — I just need you to remove your panties, as the white is reflecting the light, so we know you have panties on." She wasn't prepared, she said, to see her "vagina shot" at a packed screening of the finished film. Ultimately, though, she consulted with a lawyer and decided to let the moment stay in. "Why? Because it was correct for the film and for the character; and because, after all, I did it," she wrote. But Stone managed to change the conversation in 1995. 

After being somewhat typecast following her appearance in Basic Instinct, a new role would turn the tides in Stone's favor. In Martin Scorsese's Casino, Stone played Robert De Niro's self-centered and demanding wife. The film was highly acclaimed, and Stone stood out: she was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for her breathtaking performance. In spite of her mounting successes, though, Stone's personal experience of being in the limelight was filled with both the highs and lows that show business has to offer.

"I had the kind of fame where people chase you down the street, and stores have to lock the doors and hide you," she wrote in her memoir. "People get on top of your car until the car actually caves in... SWAT teams are called." Yet Stone had no problem standing up for herself. Take, for example, the time a casting director allegedly used a credit card to break into an office and steal a script after directors refused to let Stone see it. This was not a woman who took "no" easily!

Romantically, Stone engaged in a series of flings. In 1994 she met William J. MacDonald on the set of Sliver. As their romance took off, things got more serious. The pair were soon engaged, but amid the whirlwind, things didn't go to plan, and they broke off the engagement. Believe it or not, Stone returned the ring via FedEx! A few years later, Sharon Stone became involved with news executive editor Phil Bronstein, and the two adopted a baby — Stone's first child, Roan Joseph Bronstein.

When the couple divorced in 2004, a judge granted Bronstein custody. And this decision was a heart-wrenching blow for the actress. "After I lost primary custody of Roan, I couldn’t function. I just lay on the couch. I was so damn tired. I would cry," she revealed in an interview with Saga magazine. In March 2023 Stone was still feeling the painful effect of this. "The judge asked my child – my tiny little boy: 'Do you know your mother makes sex movies?'" she said on the Table for Two podcast. "Like, this kind of abuse by the system – that I was considered what kind of parent I was, because I made that movie.” She said it "literally broke [her] heart."

Outside of her tumultuous private life, though, the early 2000s brought some studio flops for Stone. She was up for multiple Golden Raspberry awards — an "award" designed to "honor" the worst performances of the year. But, in 2001, she experienced something even more traumatic than a rocky patch in her career. This time, it was her health that would come under attack. And Stone is still feeling the effects of this event to this day.

In 2001 Stone was hospitalized for a subarachnoid hemorrhage in her brain. Stone initially suffered a severe headache but didn't immediately head to the ER. But when she did go, she found that her condition was critical. "I had a one percent chance of living by the time I got surgery — and they wouldn’t know for a month if I would live,” Stone shared with Variety. The traumatic event had a seemingly irreparable impact on her life.

Stone has since opened up about the financial hardships and painful fall from grace her failing health caused her. "I had to remortgage my house. I lost everything I had. I lost my place in the business. I was like the hottest movie star, you know?" she told Variety in 2019. “It was like Miss Princess Diana and I were so famous — and she died and I had a stroke. And we were forgotten." And Stone has been even more open about her condition since then.

“People treated me in a way that was brutally unkind,” she told Variety. “From other women in my own business to the female judge who handled my custody case, I don’t think anyone grasps how dangerous a stroke is for women and what it takes to recover — it took me about seven years.” Everything became a struggle: “[From] trying to keep custody of my son to just functioning — to be able to work at all.” The last point has been particularly difficult, according to Stone.

“I recovered for seven years, and I haven’t had jobs since,” Stone said at The Hollywood Reporter’s Raising Our Voices in May 2023. “When it first happened, I didn’t want to tell anybody because you know if something goes wrong with you, you’re out.” She continued, “I broke a lot of glass ceilings on the top of my head. I want to tell you that it hurt. It hurt to get paid. It hurt to fight the studio heads. It hurt to make boundaries — boundaries about who could come in my trailer and what they could ask for; boundaries about the fact that I didn’t want to sign my contract in my makeup trailer on the day that I started a show.”

That's not to say that Stone hasn't been busy. For decades now, she has worked closely with UNICEF projects, promoting humanitarian causes across the world. She's also now become an advocate for people to recognize brain-aging diseases that disproportionally affect women. And even now, the single mother of three — including two more adopted children, Laird Vonne and Quinn Kelly — Stone finds time to act. You may have seen her in Murderville or in The Flight Attendant or even in the music videos for Rita Ora's "You Only Love Me." Stone has a sense of humor about her reputation, too.

"If people want to think I'm a sex symbol, it's, like, yeah. Think it up. I mean, like, good for me," she joked with Oprah Winfrey in 2014. But one particularly memorable role saw her break out from being merely a symbol of desire. The Quick and the Dead saw Stone both star in and co-produce the film. It wasn't an easy road, though. She had to fight at almost every turn for her voice to be heard — especially when it came to casting a then almost-unknown Leonardo DiCaprio.

When it came to this movie, there was one thing that Stone had to have: Leonardo DiCaprio. She was so passionate about the up-and-coming star that she decided she’d move heaven and Earth to get him onboard. In fact, Stone rewarded DiCaprio out of her own pocket when the studio said no. And ultimately, it was a decision that she’d have to pay for personally.

DiCaprio was already starting to prove his acting prowess before he got the part in Sam Raimi’s 1995 Western. The future Titanic star had impressed critics with his turn in This Boy’s Life in 1993. And he’d even earned himself an Oscar nomination following his striking performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. But it wasn’t until Stone insisted DiCaprio be given a shot that TriStar Pictures agreed to cast him in The Quick and the Dead.

Apparently, the young actor’s behavior on other sets had raised a few eyebrows. And yet Stone, who also starred in the revamped Western as gun-toting cowgirl “The Lady,” was adamant that the young heartthrob star in the movie. Before Titanic made him a superstar, DiCaprio was just another actor searching for his big break. After a brief appearance in a TV sitcom, he scored his first movie role in 1991’s schlocky horror flick Critters 3. He later admitted in a biography that it was “possibly one of the worst films of all time.”

And yet the young actor was spotted by Robert De Niro who personally chose DiCaprio from 400 auditionees to be his co-star. The two appeared together in 1993’s This Boy’s Life, a powerful drama based on a true story. But the actor’s behavior on set was called into question again, with director Michael Caton-Jones reportedly having to get tough.

And it seems Caton-Jones’s approach paid off, as DiCaprio knuckled down and impressed. In 2015 Rolling Stone reflected on his performance, saying his character evolved from “a wide-eyed son to a rebellious greaser to an independent, sensitive young man.” And it’s likely that portrayal won him his next role – as mentally-impaired Arnie in 1993’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. And then came his role opposite Sharon Stone.

With the power to make crew and casting decisions, Stone fought to get Sam Raimi and Leonardo DiCaprio on board. Because director Raimi was relatively unknown back then, despite achieving cult success with his Evil Dead trilogy. And Stone said in her memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, that Raimi was just a “D-movie” director in the eyes of studio bosses. So the actress told TriStar Pictures that he “would work nearly for free as an enticement.”

And proving that she’s not to be trifled with, Stone made her position clear to TriStar. She wrote in her book that “getting a producer credit as an actress is often seen as a vanity deal.” But she’d wanted to be proactive and contribute herself. She added, “I won’t accept a vanity deal and let them know that up front... That gets a lot of silence and not a lot of joy on the other end.”

Feisty Stone was perhaps the perfect actress to play gun-slinging protagonist “The Lady” – real name Ellen – in the movie. Writer Simon Moore wanted to flip the traditional male-as-hero premise of traditional Westerns. In the book The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi, Moore said, “When you introduce women into that kind of world, something very interesting happens and you have an interesting dynamic straight away.”

Producer Stone also used her influence to get Russell Crowe on board. The Australian actor, who played Cort, had made an impression on her in one of his earlier flicks. Stone told The New York Times in 1995, “When I saw Romper Stomper, I thought Russell was not only charismatic, attractive, and talented but also fearless.”

Crowe reportedly had a reputation for being somewhat difficult to work with. And Raimi described the Aussie actor to The New York Times as, “Bold and challenging. He reminds me of what we imagine the American cowboy to have been like.” Yet Crowe wasn’t so enamored with his director either – comparing Raimi to “the fourth Stooge” in The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi.

The Quick and the Dead was Crowe’s first American film and studio bosses were nervous about casting him. Which is why Stone had to use her sway. But she also did this for DiCaprio’s casting. Because the Basic Instinct star was won over as soon as she saw the young actor try out. In her memoir, Stone wrote, “This kid named Leonardo DiCaprio was the only one who nailed the audition.”

The actress claimed that Tristar’s reaction was, “Why an unknown, Sharon, why are you always shooting yourself in the foot?” She recalled, “The studio said if I wanted [DiCaprio] so much, I could pay for him out of my own salary. So I did.” But while she helped his career, Stone didn’t do much for DiCaprio’s image. Of their on-screen smooch — according to the IMDb website — she reportedly said, “It was about as sexy as kissing my arm.”

To rub salt in the wound, DiCaprio’s co-star Crowe was named as Stone’s favorite on-screen kisser. Well, DiCaprio was only 21 at the time! And IMBb further revealed that Liam Neeson was originally lined up to play the role of Cort, while Sam Rockwell auditioned for the part of “The Kid” that eventually went to DiCaprio.

It seems that Crowe and Stone did a little more than kissing in the original cut of the movie. According to The Register-Guard newspaper, the pair got all hot and heavy in one scene that ended up being dropped from the American movie theater release. Apparently, Stone felt it wasn’t in keeping with the rest of the film. It was restored for the DVD version, though.

Apparently, there were 12 — yes, 12 — other Westerns being filmed at the same time as The Quick and the Dead in 1994. Which meant that there was a shortage of period costumes for the flick. But Stone’s leather jacket in the movie was totally authentic. Estimated to be over 100 years old, according to IMDb, it was borrowed from a Western museum. You wouldn’t want to spill a drink down that, would you?

And a lot of effort went into making the film’s guns and shoot-out sequences look convincingly “Old West.” Thell Reed, a weapons specialist, worked with the actors for three months on gun technique. And he even dipped the brand-new guns into chlorinated water to give them an old, rusty look. Plus, if you’re wondering who was the fastest draw, it was Gene Hackman, who played the villain, Herod.

Hackman wasn’t the only one with impressive gun skills. Lance Henriksen, who played Ace Hanlon, secretly worked on a trick for weeks before revealing it to the movie’s director. As soon as Raimi saw what Henriksen could do, according to IMDb, he edited it in. The film website also claims that the cast would jokingly greet each other with a quick-draw action.

If Stone looked at ease riding her horse Magic in the movie, then that’s because she was. The actress already had lots of equestrian experience and formed a strong attachment to her trusty steed in the flick. She even ended up buying Magic after the filming wrapped up. According to IMDb, Stone said, “I’ve been riding all my life but never such a fine horse as this.”

Those who’ve seen The Quick and the Dead will know that DiCaprio’s The Kid is supposedly the son of the main antagonist, Herod. This is something the villain denies. But The Kid’s real name would suggest he’s right – it’s Fee Herod. And speaking of family ties – Stone’s real-life brother Michael also popped up in the movie, according to IMDb. The star’s sibling played one of Herod’s henchmen.

IMDb has more trivia on the flick’s leading lady, too. Stone measures a fairly lofty 5ft 8in in height. And in the scene where her character, The Lady, arrives in the town of Redemption, the undertaker ominously questions, “5’8"? Am I right? I’m never wrong.” IMDb also claimed that the actress had a stand-in sacked for getting more attention on set than she did. Yikes! But we’re sure there are two sides to that story.

The movie was shot almost exclusively at Old Tucson Studios in Arizona, where many a Western has been filmed. In fact, The Quick and the Dead was one of the last flicks to utilize the set before a huge fire gutted it in April 1995. The blaze destroyed rare behind-the-scenes footage of Western stars such as John Wayne. And it took a host of memorabilia, including a wardrobe from Little House on the Prairie.

And it might interest you to know that many extras in The Quick and the Dead were local, unemployed folk. According to IMDb, casting director Cecily Jordan wanted people “with a million miles on their faces.” That had its downsides, though, when an elderly extra died during filming. The man was subsequently honored by “Spotted Horse” actor and Lakota Native American Jonothon Gill, who performed a ceremony.

Plus, The Quick and the Dead was the last feature film for actor Roberts Blossom, who played “Doc” Wallace. Blossom was perhaps best known for playing Old Man Marley in Home Alone. Separately, actor Woody Strode died just a few months after filming finished. Strode, who played Charlie Moonlight, got a mention in the closing credits in his memory.

There’s a lot to be said for writer Moore and director Raimi’s attempts to reinvent the Western with a female lead. But their take on the genre just didn’t work for many. Critic Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote in 1995, “You leave the film dazed instead of dazzled, as if an expert marksman had drawn his gun only to shoot himself in the foot.”

The New York Times praised the flick, though, with critic Janet Maslin writing, “Stone’s presence nicely underscores the genre-bending tactics of Raimi, the cult filmmaker now doing his best to reinvent the B movie.” But Raimi took the negative reviews hard, saying in The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi, “I was very confused after that movie. For years I thought, I’m like a dinosaur. I couldn’t change with the material.”

But Raimi can console himself that The Quick and the Dead has met with more favorable reviews post-1990s. In 2013 Jay Royston of WhatCulture wrote, “I have to put it in the top three Raimi movies, maybe because it is so unlike other Raimi films yet combines all three of the best qualities of a director already mentioned; working with actors, innovating camera shots and telling a good story visually.” Hear, hear.