The 2006 co-star who dreaded working with Sharon Stone: “I heard she’s a fucking nightmare”
A reputation is a difficult thing to shake off in Hollywood, something that Sharon Stone knows all too well, a matter that wasn’t helped by one of her co-stars stepping onto a set they shared with some preconceived ideas of their own.
In the early 1990s, Stone became one of the biggest female stars in the business, thanks largely to Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct, which became a cultural phenomenon, for better or worse. At the time, it was the biggest boost her career had ever received, but it wasn’t something the actor was comfortable with.
On one hand, she was a generational femme fatale and sex symbol. On the other hand, though, she frequently found herself being tarred by the dreaded ‘difficult’ brush. At the time, a high-profile woman speaking up for themselves, calling out the gender disparities, and demanding equality was a rarity, and for that reason, Stone soon found herself pushed out of the mainstream.
These days, she’s held up as a pioneer, a trailblazer, and a pivotal figure in edging women towards a more level playing field with their male counterparts, but in the ’90s, the view from the top levels of the industry was that she was more trouble than she was worth.
For proof, look no further than her battles with the studio to cast a young up-and-comer called Leonardo DiCaprio in Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead, which she also produced, with Stone ultimately paying his salary out of her own pocket because the higher-ups were so unconvinced by his hiring.
When the time came to bring Catharine Trammell back to the screen in Basic Instinct 2, Stone was a hands-on creative driving force behind the scenes. The first version of the sequel was cancelled, which led to her filing a lawsuit against the producers, which was settled by Mario Kassar and Andrew J Vasnar agreeing to make it.
Obviously, Basic Instinct 2 was awful, as any film that begins with Stan Collymore getting a hand-job would be, and it ultimately flopped at the box office and won three Razzies from six nominations, including ‘Worst Picture’ and ‘Worst Actor’ for Stone. To be frank, it was horrendous, with David Thewlis acknowledging as much when reflecting on his involvement as a Scotland Yard detective.
“It was a pile of shit, wasn’t it?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. “I wanted to get a job in the can before my daughter was born.” He did it for the money, which is fair enough, and while he didn’t share many scenes with Stone in Basic Instinct 2, he didn’t need to stick the boot in after the fact, either.
“It was actually very pleasant for me,” he acknowledged. “I didn’t have much to do with Sharon Stone. And thank god, because I heard she was a fucking nightmare.” Admittedly, director Michael Caton-Jones called it a “poisoned chalice,” but David Morrissey, who played the male lead, said that he and Stone “immediately hit it off and it remained that way through the filming,” hinting that, as always, there are two sides to every story.
