Sharon Stone names the only two “non-misogynistic” co-stars of her career
When it comes to depictions of the femme fatale and women who are mysterious enigmas that male characters become obsessed with figuring out, no one does it like Sharon Stone. This actor has built a ‘sex symbol’ status in cinema through her seductive onscreen appearances, including the erotic thriller Silver and the action film The Specialist, a role for which she received a nomination for ‘Most Desirable Female’ at the MTV Movie Awards, but make of that as you will.
Stone’s most memorable moment in her cinematic appearances emphasises her sensual aura and is from the 1992 neo-thriller film Basic Instinct, directed by Paul Verhoeven. The actor’s most famous moment in the movie is marked as “the interrogation scene”. This scene showcases her character Catherine Tramell, another archetypal femme fatale, uncrossing her legs and switching the cross over, a brief number of seconds film that has defined her career since.
The sequence derived controversy due to a sudden shot displaying Stone’s intimate area as she uncrosses her legs. This was a choice of camerawork and editing the actor claims director Verhoeven did not tell her would happen, which he denies was the case.
In 1995, Stone appeared in Martin Scorsese’s stylised crime thriller Casino in one of her strongest performances as Ginger McKenna, the manipulative, self-absorbed wife of a top gambling handicapper. As well as becoming another defining moment in her career, Stone has shared that working on this project was the one time she was respected as an actor and woman by her male co-stars. During a recent interview, she spoke highly of the actor playing her husband in the film Robert De Niro.
“I’ve worked with some of the biggest stars in the business, who will literally talk through my close-up, telling me what they think I should do,” Stone shared with Variety. “They’re so misogynistic — now, that is not Robert De Niro. That is not Joe Pesci, that is not those guys. But I have worked with some really big stars who will literally talk out loud through my close-up, telling me what to do.”
Pesci plays Nicki Santoro, a fictionalised vision of the real-life Mob enforcer Anthony Spilotr, who oversees control within the casino in Las Vegas. De Niro’s Sam “Ace” Rothstein fights for McKenna’s affection against her con artist on-and-off boyfriend.
Stone’s explanation hints towards mansplaining, a pejorative term coined by third-wave feminists. The word means a man giving an unwarranted comment or reason on something to a woman, recognised by the condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate tone it is given in. Author Rebecca Solnit ascribed the phenomenon to a combination of “overconfidence and cluelessness”, with these traits emphasising how to decipher mansplaining and a harmless exchange of knowledge between two people of the opposite sex.
In Stone’s case, this involved her male co-stars giving the actor unwarranted advice on acting while she was trying to perform on film.
“They just will not listen to me and will not allow me to affect their performance with my performance. That’s not great acting. I mean, I get that you’re great, and everybody thinks you’re wonderful,” Stone continued. “But listening, being present for those fractured moments is really the human experience.”
Stone’s experiences are some of many in the industry, with positive situations such as her one working with De Niro and Pesci progressively becoming unexpected one-offs. The actor has since worked with James Franco, Dennis Quaid, and Gary Oldman, to name a few male film figures who did not get named in Stone’s listing of co-stars showing ‘non-misogynistic’ behaviour.
