“They didn’t want me”: how Sharon Stone went from 13th choice to screen icon
In the early 90s, there were few better combinations than Paul Verhoeven and Sharon Stone. The Dutch director put Stone in two of his films and they were both instant classics. The first was Total Recall, in which she played the wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character, who had plenty of secrets to hide. The second was Basic Instinct, where she played opposite Michael Douglas in what is still held up as one of the pinnacles of the erotic thriller genre.
Basic Instinct is still perhaps Stone’s best-known role. To be specific, she’s probably best remembered for the scene where she uncrosses her legs. You know the one. Don’t pretend that you don’t. Still, according to the woman herself, this iconic moment almost went to somebody else.
Speaking on Dana Carvey and David Spade’s podcast, Fly on the Wall, the Oscar-nominated performer explained that she was initially way down the pecking order for the part of Catherine Tramell. “I auditioned for eight and half months, and I was the 13th woman that they offered the film to,” she said. “They really wanted Michelle Pfeiffer, and they didn’t want me. But she turned it down, and they kept going back to her, and she turned it down again. Thankfully.”
According to Stone, she waited for a total of eight-and-a-half months before she finally got the part. Other actors who were reportedly considered before her included Kim Basinger, Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Geena Davis, and Demi Moore. Stone was paid just $500,000 for her work on the film, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama, in contrast to co-star Douglas’ $14million salary.
Stone also revealed that she went through a similar process when auditioning for her next big picture, Martin Scorsese’s Casino. “They saw every showgirl in Vegas,” she remembered. “They saw tons and tons and tons of actresses… I finally just said, no, I’m not gonna line up with showgirls. And I am not gonna line up with the other 3,000 actresses… I’m not coming in till you get down to serious casting and I’m done being yanked around in the business. I really want this part and I’m really right for it.” She was eventually given the role of Ginger McKenna, trophy wife of gangster Sam “Ace” Rothstein (played by Robert De Niro), and earned an Oscar nomination for her work.
This wasn’t the first time Stone had crossed paths with Dana Carvey. He was a cast member on Saturday Night Live when the actor hosted the show in 1992. The pair were in a sketch together in which Stone played a woman going through airport security who was told to remove her clothes one item at a time by a bunch of rude guards. One of them was Carvey, who just so happened to be in costume and makeup as an Indian man.
Carvey apologised not just for putting Stone in a compromising position, but for his appropriation of a different race. “I want to apologise publicly for the security check sketch where I played an Indian man and we’re convincing Sharon, her character, or whatever, to take her clothes off to go through the security thing,” he said. “It’s so 1992, you know, it’s from another era.” To Stone’s credit, she took the apology well, noting that she wasn’t personally offended by the sketch. “That was funny to me,” she admitted. “I didn’t care. I was fine being the butt of the joke.”
