Sharon Stone Biography
Sharon Stone a former beauty pageant contestant and Ford model made her film debut with a non-speaking part as a beautiful woman fleetingly glimpsed from a moving train in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories in 1980. After that she clawed her way to a stardom that has brought back an old-fashioned, glamour to the role of movie star. Sharon Stone, who grew up a bookworm in a large family in Northwest Pennsylvania, worked her way up from McDonald's counter-girl to successful Ford model by the late 1970s.
Through the 1980s, Stone appeared as a stereotypical blonde in mostly forgettable roles. First in Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing in 1981, then as a down-and-out waitress turned movie star in Irreconcilable Differences in 1984. She played an archaeologist's daughter in King Solomon's Mines in 1985 and its sequel, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold in 1987.
Stone's first real break was playing Arnold Schwarzenegger's kick-boxing, secret agent wife in the sci-fi film Total Recall in 1990. After five more forgettable thrillers and comedies, she finally achieved overnight stardom as a sexually voracious crime writer opposite of Michael Douglas in the controversial and popular erotic thriller, Basic Instinct in 1992. Her pantie-less leg-crossing scene brought Stone much-needed notoriety, but has haunted her ever since.
In a more sympathetic role, Stone followed up with another sizzling sex melodrama, Sliver in 1993. Trying to escape the sex-bomb trap, she begged for the frigid wife role for the film Intersection in 1994. She again flexed her international box-office clout paired with Sylvester Stallone in the explosive action film The Specialist in 1994 but fared much less well commercially with her next project, The Quick and the Dead, which marked her producing debut. Stone looked terrific in the Western outfits, playing something of a distaff version of a Clint Eastwood-like gunfighter. She rebounded with her widely acclaimed performance as Ginger, the Vegas hustler who wins the heart of Robert De Niro, in Casino in 1995.
The highly-paid, much-in-demand star, Sharon next filmed a remake of the classic Diabolique with Isabelle Adjani and Chazz Palmentieri and played a death-row inmate whose lawyer (Rob Morrow) works to save her from execution in Last Dance. Stone, a diva who thoroughly enjoys her hard-won stardom, is a clever manipulator of her public image. On heavy press days, she reportedly changes outfits between each interview and photo session, a practice unheard of since the days of Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer. She lives, fittingly enough, in a gated French chateau in Beverly Hills.
