Sharon Stone is providing new details about a very popular scene.
The 63-year-old actress got candid in her memoir The Beauty of Living Twice about filming Basic Instinct.
In an excerpt, via Vanity Fair, Sharon claims that a member of the Basic Instinct production told her to take her underwear off during the cross-legged scene, and that her private area would not be visible on camera.
She said she watched the final version of the movie “with a room full of agents and lawyers, most of whom had nothing to do with the project.”
“That was how I saw my vagina-shot for the first time, long after I’d been told, ‘We can’t see anything—I just need you to remove your panties, as the white is reflecting the light, so we know you have panties on,’” she wrote.
“Yes, there have been many points of view on this topic, but since I’m the one with the vagina, in question, let me say: The other points of view are bulls–t…it was me and my parts up there.”
She then said she slapped director “Paul [Verhoeven] across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer, Marty Singer.”
Her lawyer, she claims, said the film could not be made, according to the Screen Actors Guild: “It wasn’t legal to shoot up my dress in this fashion,” she wrote.
“I let Paul know of the options Marty had laid out for me. Of course, he vehemently denied that I had any choices at all. I was just an actress, just a woman; what choices could I have? But I did have choices. So I thought and thought and I chose to allow this scene in the film. Why? Because it was correct for the film and for the character; and because, after all, I did it,” she continued.
She said she felt the need “to become objective” as to why she was tricked into removing her underwear for the scene. considering she fought for the role and “only this director had stood up for me.”
“I can say that the role was by far the most stretching that I had ever done in terms of considering the dark side of myself. It was terrifying. I had walked in my sleep three times during production, twice waking fully dressed in my car in my garage. I had hideous nightmares,” she also said.
“For the first time, I was asking to learn how to know something new. I was asking for the world to change. I was asking for permission to say why. Do you have any idea how many people have watched Basic Instinct in the last 20-something years? Think about it. It’s about more than just a peek up my skirt, people,” she added.
She also called out predatory behavior on set of other films, alleging that one director would demand for her to sit on his lap.
“This #MeToo candidate called me in to work every day for weeks, when Laird was a brand-new baby, and had me go through the works—hair, makeup, and wardrobe—and then wouldn’t shoot with me because I refused to sit in his lap and take direction. Of course the film was a bomb. The level of insecurity and unprofessionalism, and I would guess drug abuse, required to make those kinds of choices never leads to good work.”
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