Sharon Stone: Getting Stoned

From the city by the bay that she now calls home, perennial style setter Sharon Stone lets rip on everything from guns, girlfriends and Gwyneth Paltrow to marriage, maternity and her first comedy in over a decade, The Muse.

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When I arrive at San Francisco's Delancey Street Restaurant to meet Sharon Stone, I find her sitting at a table engrossed in conversation with Dr. Mimi Silbert, the bubbly cofounder of the Delancey Street Foundation, a self-help residential education center for former substance abusers and ex-convicts. After I greet them both and sit down, the women continue to chatter like schoolgirls exchanging gossip. "Did you see what was in the Chronicle today?" Stone asks. "They said that my husband and I were necking in a restaurant on the first night of Passover. They took it from the Post, which said we were canoodling. I said to Phil, 'Is that, like, an illegal thing to do if you're Jewish?' He said, 'Not unless you're pork.'"

It's odd and refreshing to see this Hollywood icon giggle over the silly things written about her. Plus, she looks so comfortable and relaxed it's easy to forget she's an icon at all, much less Sharon Stone, one of Hollywood's highest-paid and most ambitious actresses. But then, this is a woman who toughed it out in 17 flicks before becoming a star with 1992's Basic Instinct, has weathered disappointments since (Sliver, Intersection, The Specialist, The Quick and the Dead, Diabolique, Last Dance) and has taken risks to win her accolades (an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award for Casino and a Golden Globe nomination for The Mighty).

Stone's life has changed dramatically since she met Phil Bronstein, executive editor of the San Francisco Examiner, while making the sci-fi film Sphere in San Francisco in 1997. Since settling down with her husband in San Francisco, Stone has become heavily involved with that city's social scene and charities. She's made changes in her career, too. Now she's starring in her first comedy in years, Albert Brooks's The Muse, in which she plays the title role, a woman who's convinced neurotic Hollywood screenwriters that she's a genuine daughter of Zeus and can inspire them to overcome writer's block. She's also starring in the indie ensemble Simpatico opposite Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges in a role that called for her to look her age--which, at 41, she doesn't in real life.

LAWRENCE GROBEL: How did it feel to make a comedy for a change?

SHARON STONE: It was fun to the point where I want to say it was the funnest! Fun to the point of silliness, but absolutely focused and professional. This is my first full-blown comedy and I just wish I understood then when I started it what I know now. I still have a lot to learn. Actually, I'd like to go back and do the movie again.

Q: There are a number of Hollywood-player cameos in The Muse. Doesn't your Casino director, Martin Scorsese, have one?

A: Yes. He plays himself. He talks a thousand miles an hour and never stops speaking for the entire scene, in which he throws a fit and says he needs better parking, and complains that there aren't any magazines around for him to read. I wrote Marty a note that said, "I saw the movie. You're the funniest scene. I, however, am the movie. Kiss my ass."

Q: James Cameron has a role, too. I can't see him being funny.

A: As bold and brilliant an individual as he is, he was the shyest of all the people doing cameos, which was dear.

Q: Brooks doesn't usually do a lot of press. Do you think he will for this film?

A: I tried to tell Albert how he can sell the film, because I have a blue-collar ethic--they give me a lot of money, and when I'm done acting I turn into the Avon lady. That's part of my deal. But it was like I was speaking Swahili to Albert.

Q: You often say after finishing a film that it's the best work you've done. And then the movie quietly disappears and you're left with that quote.

A: I think I ruin everything that I do. On The Muse, I'm not objective. I don't know if I'm good or bad or funny or awful.

Q: I've heard that you're very good in Simpatico, a drama about two friends who double-cross a third friend. What made you want to do it?

A: Because it's the most brilliantly written part I've ever read.

Q: Do you play one of the double-crossers?

A: I play someone whose life is the result of a corrupt and violent choice made 20 years before.

Q: Every time I pick up the paper it seems I'm reading about how you're doing an event here, making a film there. With all you've got on your plate, how often do you see your husband?

A: Constantly. When I met him, he worked seven days a week, like a movie schedule, all year long. He hadn't taken a vacation in five years. Since then things have changed a lot.

Q: Is it true you didn't initially like him?

A: Yes, I didn't like him at first. But then I had lunch with him and a couple of other people. And that night he left to go on a hiking trip. He drove to a pay phone each day to call me. We talked about books, then he sent me some books. Then he sent me some flowers.

Q: How do you know he was at a pay phone and wasn't calling from a cellular phone?

A: Because you could just hear it. People would drive up and be in the parking lot waiting for the phone.

Q: When did you fall in love with him?

A: I would say I've fallen in love with him in a much bigger degree since I've been married to him.

Q. Whose decision was it to marry?

A: His.

Q: Did he have to talk you into it?

A: It was not the kind of thing I could be talked into, but it was certainly he who wanted to get married. I had no interest in getting married anymore. But I had no idea what marriage could be.

Q: Did you draw up cohabitation agreements with him?

A: It's not in good taste to talk about that.

Q: So the answer's yes?

A: The answer is that whatever agreements we came to need to be between us.

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