Sharon Stone recalls being asked to sleep with co-star by producer
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Sharon Stone has spoken out about her experiences of sexism in the film industry, including the time she was asked to have sex with a co-star by a producer.
In an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir The Beauty Of Living Twice, released by Vanity Fair on Thursday (March 18), Stone recalled the unnamed producer making the suggestion so that the actors “could have onscreen chemistry.”
“He walked back and forth in his office with the [malted milk] balls falling out of the spout and rolling all over the wood floor as he explained to me why I should fuck my co-star,” Stone wrote. “Why, in his day, he made love to Ava Gardner onscreen and it was so sensational! Now just the creepy thought of him in the same room with Ava Gardner gave me pause.”
She continued: “I felt they could have just hired a costar with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines. I also felt they could fuck him themselves and leave me out of it,” she wrote. “It was my job to act and I said so.”
The actress detailed a number of other incidents, including being told by a former manager that no one would hire her because she wasn’t “fuckable,” as well as recalling a “#MeToo candidate” who caused problems on set because she refused to “sit in his lap and take direction.”
Stone added that she was labelled “difficult” as a result of speaking up on set, which she believes hampered her career in Hollywood.
The Golden Globe winner’s memoir will also reportedly go into detail about her role in Basic Instinct, including the infamous leg-crossing scene, and how she had to fight to land the starring role of Catherine Tramell because “Michael Douglas didn’t want to test with me.”
Last year, Stone said she could have benefitted from having intimacy coordinators on set during her early years as an actor.
“They didn’t have [intimacy coordinators] in my day,” Stone told Hollywood star Jake Picking for the August issue of Attitude Magazine. “When I did my first movie, which was Irreconcilable Differences, I had a topless scene. And they didn’t even clear the set.”
