Why Sharon Stone walked off the set of her first Italian film: “Classic pattern with these American actresses”
In the 2010s, with her Hollywood career floundering, Sharon Stone did what many American movie stars do: she went European.
It’s long been a tried-and-tested formula for stars who are past their peak in Hollywood, or otherwise unemployable in America, to look to Europe to keep their film careers going. After all, there are few things a scrappy European producer loves more than a famous American name that still carries some brand recognition to put in their movie, as that presence usually winds up paying for itself in distribution deals and on home video.
In recent years, the likes of Johnny Depp, Al Pacino, and Dustin Hoffman have all lent their names to European productions (with mixed results), and Stone was well ahead of the curve when her career hit some hard times in the 2000s. After all, in 2011, only five years after an attempted comeback with Basic Instinct 2 fell flat on its face, Stone starred in Largo Winch II, a French action thriller sequel based on a popular Belgian comic book.
What is Largo Winch, you may ask? Few audiences outside of France and Belgium have an answer to that, nor could they tell you whether the movie was any good. However, it must have been a decent experience for Stone, because a few years later, she starred in the Russian-Ukrainian romcom Love in Vegas, a scintillating piece of modern cinema where she was initially meant to cameo as herself but decided to play an ageing rock star, complete with a knowingly phoney British accent. Well, whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Next up on Stone’s magical mystery tour was Italy, and unfortunately for her, this is where the wheels came off. She was pursued by acclaimed arthouse director Pupi Avati and his producer brother, Antonio, to star in Un ragazzo d’oro, which translates to A Golden Boy, but not because they were fans of her. Instead, Pupi freely admitted at a press conference in Rome, “I knew there are American actresses more capable than her, but I wanted a film icon. Every day on the set, I was telling her, ‘But do you realise that you are Sharon Stone because of that day when you crossed your legs?’”
It’s a good thing for Pupi that he made this disrespectful and highly sexist comment after the movie was made, because if he had said it to Stone before the shoot, there’s surely no way she would have agreed to be in his film. Whatever the case, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with Stone’s legal team, she signed up to play actor-turned-publisher Ludovica Stern.
However, the extensive negotiations and some of her demands seemingly offended the Avatis. “It was a negotiation that bordered on ridiculousness,” Pupi grumbled, “Concerning embarrassing details, as if Italy was a third-world country. By the way, we do have electricity in Italy.”
Given the background to her participation, and the Avatis’, shall we say, less-than-enthusiastic outlook on Stone’s acting chops, it’s no surprise that the shoot turned into a debacle. Pupi accused the Casino star of letting her ego get the best of her when 200 paparazzi descended upon her at the famous Hassler Hotel in Rome, witheringly concluding, “It is the classic pattern with these American actresses who are slightly declining.”
Then, on the final day of the shoot, Pupi accused her of pulling a disappearing act from set when she caught on to the fact that a local TV cameraman was filming her, as well as the usual gaggle of photographers.
Although Pupi believed she had fed off the attention previously, he claimed she soon contacted him through her agent in Los Angeles to say that she wouldn’t return to set until the cameraman was removed. “Obviously, we did so, and she, like nothing happened, shot the scene,” Pupi said, his disdain barely at bay, adding, “The thing that I found most absurd is that she had to call to the States and to close herself in a car, instead of coming to ask us directly.”
All in all, the Avatis did their best to paint Stone as an out-of-touch Hollywood diva, and it quickly spread like wildfire on the internet. Stone’s representative hastily released a statement to The Hollywood Reporter claiming, “None of this is true. Ms Stone is the consummate professional”, but alas, the damage was already done. What was the whole truth? We’ll probably never know.
