Sharon Stone: Dame Fame

She wanted it, she got it. And when she figured what it would cost her, she was off "by at least 2000 percent." Sharon Stone talks about the upside and downside of her hypercelebrity.

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Three years ago few people had ever heard of Sharon Stone, despite the many films she'd made over the years in Hollywood. With a single film, Basic Instinct, and, one might say, with a single gesture, uncrossing her legs to reveal a strategic absence of underwear. Stone was tossed into the peculiar crucible of movie goddessdom. She came as equipped as anybody could be for fame. She'd sought it and thought about it all her life; she had a first-class sense of humor and a clever knack for fun; and she'd invented a style of celebrity that she knew would wear well. But in the end, thinking you can handle fame because you've prepared yourself to do so is like thinking you can raise a cute tiger cub because you're a schooled zoologist. And when you get famous for being a sex siren, it's not the same thing as getting famous for winning Desert Storm.

People steal your underwear instead of throwing ticker tape; you have to fight for your dignity, not be celebrated for it. In the past year Stone has been media-raped in the tabloids for the affair/engagement/breakup soap opera with Bill MacDonald and failed to make any movie that approaches the success of Basic Instinct. On the plus side, of course, are all the alluring privileges and validation that come with stardom. So we figured that Stone, who's about as smart as movie stars come, was in the perfect position to let us in on the good, the bad and the ugly of fame.

VIRGINIA CAMPBELL: So now you belong to the society of people who are famous.

SHARON STONE: They were all so happy there was someone new to talk to. They were nice to me when it happened.

Q: What are some of the peculiar demands made on you now?

A: I've become so famous that people ask me for opinions on things I have no right to speak about. I try not to give specific opinions about things I'm not versed in. I try to give more philosophical responses, which I'm more sure of. The regular basic principles that get you through.

Q: They're a neat trick in this town.

A: It's a difficult trick because it's a fruit with some bitter seeds, and if you permit yourself to bite into one of those seeds, you're in big trouble. This has been a tough year. I've had them in my mouth and it's taken incredible discipline to spit them back out.

Q: Have you gotten to the point of hating interviews?

A: Usually the interviewer comes with an agenda. They want to catch me in something, and reveal some newsworthy thing, some big thing. So they ask you the same question from 52 angles and try to coerce you into their agenda. It becomes a big manipulation, so the interviews are never interesting.

Q: What insight into human nature has your experience of fame given you?

A: I've been at this for so long that I knew everybody in the business long before I became famous, and I didn't have value to many of them. Now, suddenly, the people who were coarse and rude before treat me as though we've never met, and now I'm fabulous, they're fabulous and isn't it fabulous we're chatting? My value has so greatly changed, I'm not even the same girl anymore. They don't seem to realize that I might actually be the same human being they used to insult and shit on, and I might recall the past. The greed is that overwhelming. My feeling is that they'll be not nice to me again, so I might as well enjoy this phase.

Q: Were you a basically trusting person before this all happened?

A: I'm a basically trusting person now.

Q: Even in this business?

A: Yes, because it's so much easier now. People show you almost instantaneously if they're not trustworthy. The people you can't trust are grubbing for something they want, and you get to decide, do you want to give it to them? You have to be pretty mature. You have to say, I see what you want, and that works for me or it doesn't work for me. I may or may not accommodate them, but I don't have to loathe them.

Q: I've often thought that though many people work very hard to become movie stars, in the end audiences create the stars they want. They draw them out of the ether.

A: Yes, they come and get you. And if you want to leave, you're not going. They possess you.

Q: What do they want you to be?

A: I think they want a resurgence of the old-fashioned movie star. I think they want me to be bigger than life. Glamorous and racy.

Q: Let's talk about the beginning of your fame, when Basic Instinct opened. Where and when, exactly, did fame start for you?

A: I got famous from a Friday to a Tuesday. On Friday, I worked. On Tuesday, people were pounding on my car windows. Very shortly after that I went to Cannes for Basic Instinct. That roar never ceased, 24 hours a day for six days, to the point where by the fifth day I was on the floor in the bathroom of my friend's restaurant sweating and heaving.

Q: How did you regroup after Cannes?

A: I went up to my teacher Roy London's house in Santa Barbara for 10 days and stared at the trees and tried to figure out how I was going to live. Then I brought in my family and my closest friends and I hired security people to come in, and they discussed with us what we had to do to be safe--where I had to sit in a restaurant, how I could go to a movie, how to handle myself at public events, which letters go to the FBI.

Q: Which letters go to the FBI?

A: Everybody who's famous gets these letters. One of the same guys who writes to me writes to Princess Margaret--and we have a lot in common! There are people who can determine the psychological profile of the writer. The letter doesn't get to me.

Q: How do you deal with this?

A: There's a lot of stress. A lot of people live with it by living in denial. People advise me to do that--you know, don't think about it. But people who don't worry about it behave in ways I don't want to behave. They act really strange--"Ha, ha, everything's really great, whooo-OOOOO." Loopy-land. This puts you in physical danger and in dire psychological danger. I don't want to do that.

Q: You must have thought about what fame would mean in terms of your privacy. Were you off in your estimation by about 200 percent?

A: By at least 2000 percent.

Q: Do you slip off to be by yourself?

A: I was alone for two hours a couple of weeks ago, and it was the first time I'd been alone in a year and a half. I didn't know what to do. In order to maintain my real life and take care of my business, it takes all of my time. I sleep and go into my dreams to escape.

Q: How do you keep your equanimity from day-to-day?

A: I have little mini-breakdowns all the time. That helps. I scream and cry and say I'm losing my mind and I'll never make it through the day.

Q: Have you gotten a gun?

A: I've always slept with a shotgun in my room. But I'm a country girl and my father is Mr. Field & Stream. When I was five I was shooting bottles off tree trunks. I don't have a big moral dilemma--if someone's in my house I'm going to shoot them. And I have good aim. Particularly since doing The Quick and the Dead. Since learning quick draw my reflexes are unbelievably fast.

Q: Who do you look to as someone who's handled fame well?

A: The thing is, when I'm crying and my friends tell me everything will be all right, I realize I don't know of anybody who has handled this.

Q: What's the one human quality you think you need to keep your head together when you become famous?

A: Fame happens in so many ways. Mine was the result of a contest of wills between me and the system. My will is what made me famous, not my talent, not my charm, not my superficial qualities. Intelligent willfulness can get you about anywhere you want to go. Where you want to go is the important issue.

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