Sharon Stone

Sharon Vonne Stone (born March 10, 1958) is an American actress, producer, and former fashion model. After modeling in television commercials and print advertisements, she made her film debut as an extra in Woody Allen's comedy-drama Stardust Memories (1980). Her first speaking part was in Wes Craven's horror film Deadly Blessing(1981), and throughout the 1980s, Stone went on to appear in films such as Irreconcilable Differences (1984), King Solomon's Mines (1985), Cold Steel (1987), and Above the Law (1988). She found mainstream prominence with her part in Paul Verhoeven's action film Total Recall (1990). Stone became a sex symbol and rose to international recognition when she starred as Catherine Tramell in another Verhoeven film, the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992), for which she earned her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. She received further critical acclaim with her performance in Martin Scorsese's crime drama Casino (1995), garnering the Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Stone received two more Golden Globe Award nominations for her roles in The Mighty (1998) and The Muse(1999). Her other notable film roles include Sliver (1993), The Specialist (1994), The Quick and the Dead (1995), Last Dance (1996), Sphere (1998), Catwoman (2004), Broken Flowers (2005), Alpha Dog (2006), Basic Instinct 2(2006), Bobby (2006), Lovelace (2013), Fading Gigolo (2013), and The Disaster Artist (2017). In 1995, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2005, she was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.

On television, Stone has had notable performances in the mini-series War and Remembrance (1987) and the made-for-HBO film If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000). She made guest appearances in The Practice (2004), winning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series, and in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2010). She has also starred in the action drama series Agent X (2015), the murder mystery series Mosaic(2017) and the series Better Things (2019), The New Pope (2019) and Ratched (2020).

Contents

 * 1Early life and education
 * 2Career
 * 2.11980s
 * 2.21990s
 * 2.32000s
 * 2.42010s
 * 3Public image
 * 3.1In media and fashion
 * 3.2Criticism
 * 3.2.1Tanzania
 * 3.2.2Chinese earthquake
 * 4Personal life
 * 4.1Relationships and family
 * 4.2Health
 * 4.3Activism
 * 5Selected filmography and accolades
 * 6References
 * 7External links

Early life and education[edit]
Sharon Vonne Stone was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania,[1][2] to Dorothy Marie (née Lawson; b. 1933), an accountant, and Joseph William Stone II (1930–2009),[3] a tool and die manufacturer and factory worker. She has an older brother, Michael (b. 1951), a younger sister, Kelly (b. 1961), and a younger brother, Patrick (b. 1965).[4][5] She is of part Irish ancestry.[6] Stone was considered academically gifted as a child and entered the second grade when she was 5 years old.[7][8]

She graduated from Saegertown High School in Saegertown, Pennsylvania, in 1975.[5] While attending the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Stone won the title of Miss Crawford County, Pennsylvania and was a candidate for Miss Pennsylvania.[5] One of the pageant judges told her to quit school and move to New York City to become a fashion model.[5] In 1977, Stone left Meadville and moved in with an aunt in New Jersey. She was signed by Ford Modeling Agency in New York City.[9] Stone, inspired by Hillary Clinton, went back to Edinboro University to complete her degree in 2016.[10]

1980s[edit]
Stone later moved to Europe. While living there, she decided to quit modeling and pursue acting. "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.[11] Stone was cast for a brief role in Allen's Stardust Memories (1980)[5] and then had a speaking part a year later in the horror film Deadly Blessing (1981). French director Claude Lelouch cast her in Les Uns et les Autres (1982), starring James Caan.[12] She was on screen for two minutes and did not appear in the credits. On December 4, 1982, she played a ditsy bimbo meter maid in the first season of the television series Silver Spoons. In 1983, she appeared in the short-lived sports-themed television series Bay City Blues, playing Cathy St. Marie, the wife of baseball player Terry St. Marie played by actor Patrick Cassidy. That year she also appeared in the Remington Steele episode "Steele Crazy After All These Years", first aired on February 18, 1983. In 1985 she appeared in an episode of T.J Hooker (Hollywood Starr) opposite William Shatner.

Her next film role was in Irreconcilable Differences (1984), starring Ryan O'Neal, Shelley Long, and a young Drew Barrymore. Stone played a starlet who breaks up the marriage of a successful director and his screenwriter wife. In 1984, she appeared in "Echoes of the Mind", a two-part episode of Magnum, P.I., playing identical twins, one a love interest of Tom Selleck's character. Through the remainder of the 1980s, she had roles in such films as King Solomon's Mines (1985) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986), and played Steven Seagal's wife in Above the Law (1988). In 1988, she played Janice Henry for the filming of the miniseries War and Remembrance.

1990s[edit]
In Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi action film Total Recall (1990), with Arnold Schwarzenegger, she played the role of Lori Quaid, the seemingly loving wife of Schwarzenegger's character, later revealed to be an agent sent by a corrupt and ruthless governor to monitor him. The film received favorable reviews and made $261.2 million worldwide, giving Stone's career a major boost.[5] She appeared in five feature films the following year, though those were smaller-scale productions than that of Total Recall; she appeared alongside Kevin Bacon, Elizabeth Perkins, and Nathan Lane in the romantic comedy He Said, She Said, and starred in the psychological thriller Scissors, as a sexually repressed woman who becomes trapped in a mysterious apartment. She starred opposite Forest Whitaker in the dramatic thriller Diary of a Hitman, screened at the Deauville Film Festival in September.[13] and next, played a sexually provocative young photojournalist in the little-seen Year of the Gun (1991). She also obtained the role of a literary agent and former lover of a mystery writer in the thriller Where Sleeping Dogs Lie.

In another Verhoeven film, the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992),[5] she took on the role that made her a star, playing Catherine Tramell, a brilliant, bisexual, alleged serial killer. Several actresses at the time turned down the role, mostly because of the nudity required.[14] Critical response towards Basic Instinct was mixed, but Stone received critical acclaim for her "star-making performance";[15] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone remarked that "[Verhoeven's] cinematic wet dream delivers the goods, especially when Sharon Stone struts on with enough come-on carnality to singe the screen," and observed of the actress' portrayal: "Stone, a former model, is a knockout; she even got a rise out of Ah-gold in Verhoeven's Total Recall. But being the bright spot in too many dull movies (He Said, She Said; Irreconcilable Differences) stalled her career. Though Basic Instinct establishes Stone as a bombshell for the [1990s], it also shows she can nail a laugh or shade an emotion with equal aplomb."[16] Australian critic Shannon J. Harvey of the Sunday Times called the film one of the "1990s['] finest productions, doing more for female empowerment than any feminist rally. Stone – in her star-making performance – is as hot and sexy as she is ice-pick cold."[17] For the part, Stone earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, four MTV Movie Awards nominations, and a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst New Star for her "tribute to Theodore Cleaver". The film also became one of the most financially successful productions of the 1990s, grossing US$352.9 million worldwide.[18]

Stone in France, 1991

She headlined the 1993 erotic thriller Sliver, based on Ira Levin's eponymous novel about the mysterious occurrences in a privately owned New York City high-rise apartment building. The film was heavily panned by critics and earned Stone a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actress but became a commercial success, grossing US$116.3 million at the international box office.[19] She made a cameo appearance in the action film Last Action Hero (1993), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 1994, she starred opposite Richard Gere and Lolita Davidovich in the drama Intersection, directed by Mark Rydell. The film, a remake of the French film Les choses de la vie (1970) by Claude Sautet, concerns an architect (played by Gere) who as his car hurtles into a collision at an intersection, flashes through key moments in his life, including his marriage to a beautiful but chilly heiress (Stone) and his subsequent affair with a travel writer (Davidovich). Intersection received negative reviews and flopped at the box office.[20]

She starred alongside Sylvester Stallone in the action thriller The Specialist (1994), portraying May Munro, a woman who entices a bomb expert she is involved with (Stallone) into destroying the criminal gang that killed her family. Despite negative reviews, the film made US$170.3 million worldwide.[21] For her work in both Intersection and The Specialist, Stone won a Golden Raspberry Award and a Stinkers Bad Movie Award for Worst Actress, but was nominated for the MTV Movie Award for Most Desirable Female for The Specialist. In the western The Quick and the Dead (1995), she obtained the role of a gunfighter who returns to a frontier town in an effort to avenge her father's death. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival[22] and performed modestly at the box office upon its North American and European premiere. Stone received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress.[23]

Stone starred opposite Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's epic crime drama Casino (1995), where she took on the role of Ginger McKenna, the scheming, self-absorbed wife of a top gambling handicapper (De Niro). The film, based on the non-fiction book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas by Nicholas Pileggi, received widespread critical acclaim and made US$116.1 million globally.[24] Like the film, Stone's performance was unanimously praised, earning her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.[5] During an interview with The Observer, released January 28, 1996, Stone said of the response: "Thank God. I mean just finally, wow [...] I am not getting any younger. It couldn't have happened at a better time".[25] Also in 1995, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6925 Hollywood Blvd, and was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award.[26]

In 1996, Stone starred in the psychological thriller Diabolique, as the mistress of a cruel school master collaborating with his wife in an attempt to murder him. Subsequently, in the same year, she appeared as a woman waiting on death row for a brutal double murder she committed in her teens, in the little-seen drama Last Dance. Both films received lukewarm reviews,[27][28] and earned Stone a Razzie Award nomination for Worst New Star (as the new serious Sharon Stone).

In 1998, Stone starred with Dustin Hoffman and Samuel L. Jackson in the science fiction psychological thriller Sphere, directed and produced by Barry Levinson. The film was released in the United States on February 13, 1998 and made a lackluster US$50.1 million in its international theatrical run.[29] She next voiced the role of Princess Bala, daughter of the Queen of a community of ants, in the animated adventure comedy Antz, co-starring Woody Allen, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, and Gene Hackman. The film topped the box office in its opening weekend and went on to gross US$171.8 million around the globe.[30] Her last film release in the year was the drama The Mighty, where she played the mother of a 13-year-old boy suffering from Morquio syndrome. The film garnered a positive critical response upon its premiere in selected theaters,[31][32] and Stone was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.

Stone obtained the titular role of a street-wise, middle-aged moll in Gloria (1999), a remake of the 1980 film of the same name written and directed by John Cassavetes. The updated version received negative reviews, and Stone earned a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actress.[33][34][35] Gloria also flopped at the box office, grossing US$4.1 million at the North American box office despite its US$30 million budget.