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.
Q: And once you get there?
A: I have a feeling about destiny that enters into this. That we all have a predetermined destiny. What we bring to the party is how much integrity we meet our destiny with. That has a lot to do with fame and how you handle it. I always felt like I was going to be famous. There are things you know about yourself and your future.
Q: When did your future fame first cross your mind?
A: I was teeny. I never wanted to go outside and play. I wanted to stay inside and watch old movies. From three years old.
Q: What did you watch when you were three?
A: Anything that was on. Anything in black-and-white was a thrill for me. For most people in Hollywood, there's something dysfunctional from which you're escaping. That thing lets you escape into a world that exists just the way your imagination would have it. When I got to be famous I got to pursue my fantasy. I could bring back old-fashioned glamour. That's the pleasure of fame. I was in South America at a dinner, and this famous actor came up with his whole entourage at this party. And it was so seedy, the whole getup was so dark, so heavy and strange, and I thought, Why when you can create anything you want, would you create this?
Q: Obviously not everyone looks at fame as something creative.
A: No, because it can be oppressive. You start to become afraid to leave your house and you realize there's validity in that fear. That's a process that punches you in the face. You have to understand now you're different.
Q: What's the high point of your fame so far?
A: I got asked to go back to my high school and give a commencement address.
Q: What did you say to them?
A: I started out by telling them what I was like at their age. I told them when the principal Mr. Baker called me and asked me to do this, I was afraid to call him back because I was afraid he finally realized I skipped 30 days of my senior year. Anyway, I talked to them about how in high school the measure of your success is how much you can be like everyone else, and from that day forward your success is measured by your individuality. I talked to them about literature and about finding your guides.
Q: Did you tell them who yours were?
A: Yeah. I told them John Lennon was easily as important a guide to my philosophical upbringing as Shakespeare. I told them that it was important to find a way to measure their success. I didn't want to be standing there saying, "Well, I'm an actress so things are great for me, and half of you guys will be garbage collectors or secretaries at the car dealership." These are the opportunities, and each has the same value if you meet it with integrity.
Q: How did people treat you?
A: The hard part for me was when the kids all walked up onstage and they were 18 years of age, and they were such tiny little kittens. And I thought I was so young, because I live in L.A. And I could be their mommy if I'd followed other invitations for my destiny.
Q: What do you think would have happened if you'd become famous when you first came to L.A.?
A: I'd be dead. I came here in 1980. Think what that was about. Just think!
Q: Not that people aren't behaving that way today ...
A: But not with the social acceptance that we did. And I was young. I'd spent the first part of my life in a Jimmy Stewart movie, so what did I know?
Q: Were you afraid of what you didn't know?
A: I'm not a person who's very afraid. The only thing that really scares me is driving in my car alone and not knowing where I'm going. But now we have car phones, so even that isn't a big deal.
Q: You said, before Basic Instinct, "I learned that in this business there is 'Plan A,' in which you become successful by living and acting with a lot of integrity. Then there's 'Plan B,' where you sell your soul to the devil ... I still find it hard to distinguish one from the other." Can you tell Plan A'ers from B'ers now?
A: Oh yeah. All the B people have stepped forward and said [shouts], "It's me! I'm here! Over here! No more illusions! Come to us!"
Q: They now feel no need to hide themselves?
A: No, because I'm one of their people. I think because the character I played in Basic Instinct was a demonstration of the Plan B creed--she could have been their mascot--it made it okay. She was a really attractive Plan B'er. They figured I had to be Plan B. They wanted me to be Catherine. But Plan B people can be pretty entertaining. If you're secure that you're Plan A, then they're not too threatening. I've now become so famous in a kind of fame that has a life of its own-- interviews I never gave show up, all kinds of things--so there's a part of me that keeps saying, "Did you step into Plan B and you didn't know?" I don't think I did, because I know in my heart where my peace comes from, and it comes from love and truth. The simple old-fashioned way. And every time I say that people think it's just hilarious, but it's true.
Q: I've noticed that when men talk about being famous, they're interested in the idea of immortality, but that women don't think as much about that aspect of it.
A: I've been thinking about it lately. Not a lot of women get to that level of it. It's a boy's society. But I did start thinking about it when I was in Paris and I stayed in the Coco Chanel suite at the Ritz and they give you this book with the names of all the people who've stayed in that suite. I thought about someone in the future looking at the book and seeing my name in it. It was just that small thing, but it's like the domino effect, and I now think about it all over the place.
Q: Does that give you stage fright?
A: Yeah, except I remember that I'm just the court jester. It's not my job to lead anybody to heightened moral consciousness. I just try to get them to think.
Q: Louis Armstrong once said, "You can get so famous it just isn't any fun at all."
A: I feel like I'm teetering in that zone right now. Valentino, who's been dressing me for the last year, invited me to be in his show, and I said, "Okay, I'll be the last person in your show." I thought it would be fun. Then I got over there. These girls were nine feet tall and weighed 32 pounds and were beautiful, and I was going on as the finale? The fat midget? A girl who should never wear white hose? I walked out on the runway, and the first six steps I was paralyzed with fear. There was no way I could be good. So all I could do was have fun.
Q: What is your relationship with Valentino?
A: He's charming, hilarious, a blast. He completely gets my trip. We designed my Oscar dress over the phone. I'd say, "Why don't we do it like this?" And he'd say, "Sharon, you know, that's very much like a Vegas show girl." Then he'd say, "How about if we do it like this?" and I'd say, "V, you know I don't live in Palm Beach."
Q: How did you meet him?
A: He contacted me when I got nominated for the Golden Globe. As did several other people. But he sent me the most exquisite bouquet of flowers with a formally written letter expressing what his intentions were and how it would go down. It was the way you dream it might be: We'll send someone to the set with 50 dresses, we'll send the head of the couturier department and she'll fit you on the set. It was a real champagne event, not a greedy hustle.
Q: How did you decide on the Oscar dress?
A: Last year was a '50s blonde thing, a dress I'd worn to a ball in Monte Carlo. This year I wanted to wear black, and since I was presenting Best Costume I felt I could make a strong statement the way my idol Catherine Deneuve did last year with the negligee. So we decided on a '38 Berlin look, a fitted Erte-esque dress made for stage, and black eye makeup. And Van Cleef & Arpels gave me jewelry from that period.
Q: Do you go shopping?
A: No, my shopping consists of catalogs. I don't miss it.
Q: What do you miss?
A: Eating a meal out undisturbed. Being able to kiss someone I like and not have to worry about it being in the newspaper, or being in the newspaper when the relationship is over.
Q: What are some of the unexpected perks of fame?
A: Bob Dylan's gonna draw me. He's doing a book of portraits. That's way cool. These are the good things. But you can hardly find the time to do them. Bob Dylan's gonna draw me. He's doing a book of portraits. That's way cool. These are the good things. But you can hardly find the time to do them.
Q: Who've you called up?
A: My housekeeper's arranging for me to meet both with Octavio Paz and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My two favorite writers. The whole Latin-American thing works for me in a big way. I get that.
Q: What kind of fame do you want to have when you're 60?
A: The only intelligent thing is to use it in a generous way. Liz Taylor is the classic example. She's taken all her fame and all her problems and used them to address the AIDS crisis. She's using her fame for productive purposes and she's with a man who cares for her for the right reasons.
Q: You don't ever consider some Garbo deal where you've just had enough and want your privacy back?
A: I've had enough and want my privacy back now. But Garbo didn't get her privacy back by hiding--it just made every time she came out a bigger event. And with the advancement of the media, we don't have the choice anymore, anyway.
Q: Leonardo DiCaprio was working with you on The Quick and the Dead when he got nominated for an Oscar, wasn't he? Did you think about how fame was going to affect him?
A: Yeah. But I think he knew he'd be nominated. He's intelligent and organized enough interpersonally that he didn't have to pretend he didn't know his performance was of that caliber. An intelligent aspect of fame is not trying to be coy. It's just a big waste of bullshit to pretend you don't get it. Leonardo is a genius professionally and personally. To a degree that is inspirational and frightening. He's 19! Clearly he'll be the biggest star we've seen in decades. I made him promise he would show up at my door if he starts to slip or if people start chasing him. None of the kids this has happened to have his depth and breadth of understanding, and wisdom and character. He's extraordinary. But he is that rare and delicate flower that must not be exploited. I do fear for him, because I love him.
Q: Do you have anyone whose judgment provides you with perspective you need?
A: My manager, Chuck Binder. He saw me in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold and called my lawyer and said I can make that girl a star. He had a plan. The man I met then is not the man I know now. His evolution and our evolution have been enormous. He was a lot more of a ha-cha-cha kinda guy. Now he's a grounded, savvy guy married to a wonderful woman. I can run anything by him. I respect his advice. Some things he tells me no on, I know I should do. But there's a great synchronicity in our relationship. He's the most consistent factor in my success.
Q: Do you get nervous that out of sheer arbitrariness the public can turn against you?
A: I saw it happen. I chose not to react. In this last year I became the subject of a lower caliber of press than I had before. It was hurting my friends and my family.
Q: You're talking about your engagement with Bill MacDonald?
A: Yes. I was very clear about my own activities. And I was clear about who was creating a new career by attaching themselves to my fame. I knew that what I had to do was acquiesce, because the one thing that fame does is amplify everything, and I knew that in short order the amplification of their greedy, inappropriate behavior would tell on them. So at first it was horrifying, but then I used to sit in the living room watching the TV and go, "Come on, you can do it! Talk some more! Tell more!" I knew the more they talked about how awful I was, the more it would turn back on them. And then it went away.
Q: Do you feel now that if you have a romance with any kind of profile on it, you're gonna get it?
A: I just saw this episode of "Hard Copy" about how I broke up with Bill, how I got a new boyfriend with every picture--that would be an incredible turnover in my life, since this is my 23rd picture. They showed pictures of this friend of mine from the set in Arizona, and they didn't have any pictures of us except when we were working together. And they had someone neither of us have met saying, "He's this, he's that, he drives her to work every day." Since Naomi MacDonald took my personal life into the public forum, people seem to believe that's an appropriate adventure for them.
Q: Do you feel personally better protected for the next time you have an important romance?
A: I think I'm better equipped to protect myself from the very start than I was with Bill. Before that I'd always been with Christopher [Peters, son of Jon], except for my few days with Dwight Yoakam that got blown out of proportion--particularly in the photo where I'm laughing over my shoulder at something a journalist said to me and it looks like I'm having a blissful moment with Dwight. There were no blissful moments with Dwight, but they keep running this photo over and over.
Q: You said once that at the time of Total Recall you began to think very differently about your career. What was that about?
A: Five days after I wrapped Total Recall I was in a car accident--my car was totaled when an illegal alien driving up Sunset in the wrong direction hit me head-on. It dislocated my jaw, my shoulder, my knee, broke a rib. And I'd just moved into my new house which took every penny I had, including selling my patio furniture. So I had one chair and a bed and I was in a back brace and a cervical collar for nine months. So I had some lean, difficult times. I gave some thought to people I cared about and it straightened me out. Very much like doing The Quick and the Dead brought me back to my center.
Q: The Quick and the Dead was important in that way?
A: I don't make any choices now for the public. In the first year and a half [after Basic Instinct], I made a lot of choices for the public. Where to go, how I should behave. I felt that the responsibility of being famous was to exemplify positive behavior. Which I still think. But I had stopped allowing myself room for error. And I had lost the ability to say, hey, I made a mistake, so sue me. And I re-found that by being able to walk away from my relationship with Bill, which was so public. And I felt, maybe it'll be a press event, maybe it won't. I made a mistake. If you never did, then throw a rock at me, but so what?
Q: Who was the most famous person in the town where you grew up?
A: The most famous people to me as a kid were the sports stars at the high school. They were the big cheeses. They got to cut classes and not have good grades and take up more space in the halls at school.
Q: Who were your heroes as a kid?
A: I remember loving Kennedy so much. Because my parents loved him so much and because when I watched them loving him I felt so good. When Kennedy was killed my dad was home when I got home from school, and we sat in our living room and I watched the heartbreak of the death of a loved hero.
Q: Who else did the family look up to?
A: My father was a feminist, for no apparent cultural reason.
Q: Must have been his mother.
A: I think so. Because his father, who was successful in the oil business, died, and my grandmother, who had been a wealthy society lady with three kids and a beautiful big home, suddenly had no money and had to go work for herself. She was a tough broad by the time I knew her--still with a great fashion sense. She'd tell me what horrible legs I had, and then pull up her skirt just above the calf and twist her ankle to show how beautiful hers was. Always with beautifully clad feet and these Schiaparelli suits she'd go to Pittsburgh to get. That's funny because my father's favorite performer is Cyndi Lauper. He was into women who would rave against great adversity. When I would go out to play, he'd call me aside and say, "Don't let those boys win just because they're boys. You're allowed to win. You're better at this. Go win." He was very concerned that I not go into society's agreement about gender-oriented behavior.
Q: Was your mom with him on this?
A: Yeah. The thing is, I wouldn't know how to do it anyway. It befuddles me. You know, the girlie stuff to get what they want instead of just getting it. I watched someone dissing me on TV once, saying, "Sharon gets what Sharon wants." And I thought, "Well, that's a good thing. You should be doing that too instead of whining like a baby." Women seem to be breaking down into two groups: women who are proud to reach for their goals, and women who carry a banner of victimization as a career. It's so bizarre to me.
Q: Well, you're just not too risk-averse.
A: I think risks are terribly exciting. I'd rather lose than be timid. After all, we're just the amalgamation of the experiences we've had. If you don't take risks, eventually, you're nothing.
Q: You've talked about the public persona Sharon Stone that you create separately from yourself. Are you comfortable with that now?
A: Well, it pretty much has its own life now. It doesn't include me anymore. It's as if she lives in another house. I don't know her.
Q: You don't watch over her?
A: Not really anymore. I can't. She's become public domain. I do what I do. We never know what's going to happen. It would be pointless to concern myself with it.
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Virginia Campbell is one of the executive editors of Movieline.