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Business Insider
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
Sharon Stone says she still makes more money modeling than acting
Sharon Stone has been a Hollywood icon for over a quarter century, but when it comes to getting paid, her acting work isn't the most lucrative. "I still make more money today modeling than in film," Stone, 67, told Business Insider. "It's still a huge part of my reality." Stone started her career as a model, quitting school at 15 and moving to New York City to enter the fashion world. She was quickly signed by Ford Modeling Agency and found herself working regularly in Milan and Paris. By 19, she returned to New York and began pursuing acting as a path to her initial goal: directing. "Back then, I wanted to be a director, but the pesky vagina has stood in my way. Because how could you possibly have a brain and a vagina?" Stone told BI. "It seems to have confounded so many." In those early days, Stone rollerbladed around Manhattan to her auditions, her giant modeling portfolio in tow. She got her big break in 1980, when she was cast as one of the extras in Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories," and was later asked to step in for a spot in the movie's opening scene, where Allen, sitting on a train, sees a beautiful woman across from him on another train. "I was 19 and they put me in this tight dress, and I was so awkward about my body," Stone recalled. "The hair person put a real gardenia in my hair. It really meant the world to me that she did that. It made me feel important." Stone became a hot commodity in Hollywood after "Stardust Memories." After regularly working in B-movies through the 1980s like "King Solomon's Mines" and "Police Academy 4," she landed the role that would change her life when she scored the female lead in the 1992 sensation "Basic Instinct." Though the role made her an icon, she wasn't paid like one. In 2023, Stone revealed she was paid $500,000 for "Basic Instinct" while her costar Michael Douglas earned $14 million. She went on to earn an Oscar nomination in 1996 for her performance opposite Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's "Casino," and won an Emmy in 2004 for her guest spot on "The Practice." But her career was also dogged by money troubles: the actor revealed in 2024 that she lost $18 million in savings after suffering a stroke in 2001. "When I got back into my bank account, it was all gone. My refrigerator, my phone — everything was in other people's names," Stone said. "I had zero money." Over the years, Stone has modeled for high fashion brands like Dior and Dolce & Gabbana, and recently did ads for Mugler. "I'm still one of the oldest women consistently modeling today," Stone said. "I'm very, very grateful I still get to do it." Next, Stone will star in "Nobody 2," opening in theaters August 15.
Business Insider
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
Sharon Stone will play the villain — on one condition
Sharon Stone has been asked to play the villain so many times in her career that she's lost count. But she gets it. Her most famous role, playing the ice-pick-wielding seductress Catherine Tramell in the 1992 sensation "Basic Instinct," turned her from a 1980s B-movie starlet into an international sex symbol, while her character instantly became an iconic movie villain. So when she got the call recently from Universal asking if she'd be up for playing the baddie in "Nobody 2," the sequel to the ultra-violent 2021 thriller starring Bob Odenkirk as an unlikely assassin, she was ready to pass. "I just don't want to play a cookie-cutter villain, which is something that I really have a thing about," Stone, 67, told Business Insider over Zoom from her home, sporting light blue shades she'd often take off when she got excited while telling a story. "After 'Basic Instinct,' everybody wanted me to play a villain. But that was not cookie-cutter; it was a villain that touched upon the zeitgeist of the moment. That was why it was so specifically successful, and why it remains interesting to watch." So Stone came back to the studio with an idea for a character she'd been thinking about playing since watching her three sons play violent video games during the pandemic. "It was like living in a frat house, they were all screaming out of their rooms while they were playing," Stone recalled. "There is no cruelty like the kind that came out of those computers. So this character I made up came through that. I said, 'I want to play a character that essentially comes right out of social media.'" It resulted in Stone delivering a ruthless and delightfully unhinged performance as Lendina, a crime boss who causes trouble for Odenkirk's character Hutch while he's vacationing with his family. Stone's recollections of "Nobody 2" were just a warm-up for the stories she told me while reminiscing about her legendary career. From breaking down her confrontational first meeting with Michael Douglas before auditioning for "Basic Instinct," to sharing her reaction to getting slapped by Gene Hackman in " The Quick and the Dead," to plotting to play the late comic legend Phyllis Diller in a biopic, Stone's decades in Hollywood have been as fruitful as they are colorful. Below, she looks back at some of her most memorable roles. On roller-skating to auditions and getting cast by Woody Allen Sharon Stone: I'm still modeling, and I still make more money today modeling than in film. It's still a huge part of my reality. But back then, I wanted to be a director. But the pesky vagina has stood in my way. Because how could you possibly have a brain and a vagina? It seems to have confounded so many. How did you land that now-memorable shot of you inside the train in Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories"? The casting agent Riccardo Bertoni cast extras in New York. He was a guy who really saw talent. He helped Sly [Stallone] get "Rocky" made. He saw me and said, "Girl, you're a star, and I'm going to get you in front of people." I didn't have any money, so I would rollerskate to all my modeling appointments. This was back in the Studio 54 period of New York City. I went over to Riccardo's and he told me that Juliet Taylor was casting extras for this Woody Allen movie. He told me to go to this bus stop. Woody was actually sitting at the bus stop. Juliet had a podium placed in front of it, and she would look at everyone's headshots. So I rollerskated over there and had my giant modeling portfolio with me and showed it to her. She turned around and passed it to Woody in the bus stop. Then she said, "Woody would like you to sit down with him." So I skated into the bus stop and sat with Woody, and he looked at my stuff and didn't say anything, and handed it back to me, and I skated away. And I later found out I got the job. On the day of shooting, the 1st AD came out and he said, "Sharon, there was a girl who was going to play a part and she's sick, Woody's going to come out and talk to you." Woody comes over and tells me, "I want you to do this job, it's today." I was self-conscious, I was 19, and they put me in this tight dress, and I was so awkward about my body. The hair person put a real gardenia in my hair. It really meant the world to me that she did that. It made me feel important. And then Gordon Willis was the DP, the man who shot "The Godfather." It was an amazing experience. On her contentious first encounter with Michael Douglas before they co-starred in 'Basic Instinct' Did Paul Verhoeven ever bring up "Basic Instinct" to you when you two made "Total Recall"? No. And what happened was I wanted the part, but nobody would give me the script. So my manager, Chuck Binder, broke into the office by picking the lock with his credit card and stole the "Basic Instinct" script for me. I read it and I said, "I'm having this part." Everyone they went out to would turn it down. But the thing was, Michael Douglas did not want to put his bare ass out on the screen with an unknown. And I understood that. He wouldn't even test with me. But that was also for a different reason; we had an argument prior to that. This was at Cannes. A bunch of us were all sitting, and he was talking about someone and their kids. I really, really knew this person he was talking about. So I said something and he responded to me, saying, "What the fuck do you know?" It was in regard to a father/child relationship. Clearly, it triggered him. So he screams this at me across a whole group of people. And I'm not the person who goes, "Oh, excuse me, superstar." I pushed back my chair and said to him, "Let's step outside." That's how we first met. Did you two step outside? Yeah. And I explained to him what the fuck I knew about this family he was speaking about, and that I was best friends with the children and the parent. And then we parted, I wouldn't say as best friends, but amicably. So, fast forward to casting "Basic Instinct," I don't think he wanted me to be his costar. [ Laughs.] (Editor's note: Michael Douglas did not reply to a request for comment.) But I would imagine that tension between you two fueled the dynamic your characters had in the movie. It worked great, because I was not rattled if he yelled at me. That was interesting for the character, because Michael has a temper, and I didn't care. That worked very well in our dynamic. Eventually, we became the greatest of friends, to this day. I admire him tremendously. The role of Catherine Tramell made you an icon, but you had a price to pay. From the way you learned what was shown in the leg-crossing scene to the custody battle you endured afterwards with your child, if you could do it all over again, would you take the role? It made me an icon, but it didn't bring me respect. But would I do it again? We don't get to make these choices in life. I don't participate in the fantasy world in this way. What I did with what happened is exactly the way I wanted to do it. Verhoeven and I have a wonderful relationship. I would work with him again in a second. We both understand, even though we have different public ways of discussing it, we understand very well what happened regarding the crotch scene. I very much believe that none of us knew at the time what we were getting in regard to that shot, and when Paul got it, he didn't want to lose it, and he was scared to show me. And I get that. Once I had time to calm down, I didn't make him take it out of the movie when I had the legal right to. So I did have the chance to do it differently and I didn't, because once I had the chance to step back, I understood, as the director, not the girl in the film, that that made the movie better. On getting slapped by Gene Hackman in 'The Quick and the Dead' and Robert De Niro getting under her skin in 'Casino' Is the legend true that while shooting "The Quick and the Dead," the scene where Gene Hackman slaps you was improvised? Yes. And it's also true that right after he did it, I grabbed him by his lapels and picked him up off his feet. The people who played our bodyguards in the scene didn't know what to do, so they all cocked their rifles. And [director] Sam [Raimi] yelled, "CUT! CUT! CUT! EVERYBODY CALM DOWN!" [ Laughs.] Did Gene give any explanation for why he slapped you? No, and I don't think there should be. I think it's good. I have worked with actors who really get cranked up in their performances and can get violent in their work. We talk before we work, or I know going in. In "Casino," was it more fun working across from Robert De Niro or Joe Pesci? It's apples and oranges. Joey really, really fought for me to be seen and get the job. So I have a serious loyalty to Joey because he's always backed me. It was always Joey and Jimmy Caan. They backed me since I was 19. I always wanted to work with Bob. I had auditioned with him many times before "Casino." It was my dream to work with De Niro and hold my own. There's a scene in the movie where we're sitting across a table arguing and he says to me, "You're a good actress, you know that?" And I remember in that scene when he said it, how furious it made me because it was my dream to do it, and then he challenged me at the table. I remember thinking, "Oh, buddy. Not today, pal." He knew every button to go for with me because he is the greatest observational actor. He can crawl under your skin and get in there. On wanting to make a Phyllis Diller biopic and learning her laugh Do you want to play Phyllis Diller one day? I do want to play Phyllis Diller very, very badly. She and I were very close friends. She cooked me dinner a lot of times. That woman could cook. I told her I wanted to play her, and she sat down and taught me her laugh. She made me practice her laugh! Phyllis made little paintings for all my kids. Are you actively trying to get a biopic off the ground? I'm trying. You know, she didn't hit it big until she was 49. She lived in a trailer park with 5 kids and her schizophrenic husband, and practiced her act on women at the laundromat. It's unbelievable. I think there are great actors who could play Bob Hope, Red Buttons, Johnny Carson. Sam Rockwell could play Johnny in his sleep. We were tight. Yes, I'm desperate to play her. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. "Nobody 2" hits theaters August 15. More from this series
The Guardian
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Dig! XX review – amazing film of battling 90s psych rockers revisited two decades on
After 20 years, Ondi Timoner has rereleased her riveting and colossal documentary study of two psych rock bands, the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and their epic dual story of success and failure. There is about 40 minutes of extra material and a present-day coda that reveals, among other things, that each band has a member who now sells real estate. That ending, brutally and suddenly visiting grey-haired middle age on these gorgeous rock'n'roll exquisites, reminded me of the Fellini-esque dream opening to Woody Allen's Stardust Memories in which two trains, one carrying life's winners and the other with hapless losers, wind up at the same dusty rubbish heap. Dig! XX, which took years to shoot, is alternately narrated by the Warhols' frontman, Courtney Taylor-Taylor, and the BJM's relentlessly goofy tambourine player, Joel Gion, and it shows the complex 'frenmity' of the two bands. Almost from the outset, it seemed as if the Dandy Warhols were destined for commercial success tainted by feelings of selling out, and their pals the Brian Jonestown Massacre were heading for failure redeemed by a magnificent and self-destructive kind of integrity. All of them were devoted to the traditional excesses and entitlements of rock'n'roll and enamoured of their 1960s image; the BJM's guitarist Matt Hollywood even affected John Lennon specs. But it is quite late on in the film that someone makes a very good point: 'Sixties bands got into drugs. But they were famous first.' Nowhere in the film does any band-member reflect on the self-fulfilling prophecy of success and failure in their joke-names: Andy Warhol, triumphant and world-famous in the depthless world of celebrity for a lot longer than 15 minutes, and Brian Jones, dying young (or living for ever) after a mysterious accident in his swimming pool. The undisputed star of the film is surely the BJM's leader, Anton Newcombe, a snake-hipped and bedraggled Adonis who provides pure on-camera gold with his outrageous behaviour, motormouthed self-pity and disdain for everyone else; the tone is set when he blows the band's entire tour budget on sitars. The BJM suspect, with good reason, that the Warhols are jealous of their authentic rock'n'roll chaos; they live in the real thing which the prissier Warhols can only fabricate in their photoshoots, one of which takes place without permission in the BJM's squalid shared apartment. The bands both tour endlessly, an ordeal of hardship and frustration, chasing the breakout success that only happens to the Dandy Warhols because they are the ones with discipline and don't have full-on fistfights on stage. (Amazingly, gloriously, and also tragically, the ageing and reunited BJM have a public punch-up in 2023.) But does the rock'n'roll world camouflage the truth about Newcombe's mental state and drug abuse? Do we confer the ironised title of damaged genius on him by not seeing his pain and unhappiness? He goes in and out of rehab, something the film can't really show. And, for me, Gion is the other enigma: always smirking, gurning, wise-cracking – always on. Is there a hidden truth he is not showing us? A gripping and desperately sad story. Dig! XX is in UK cinemas on 25 March for one night, then on limited release in cinemas from 28 March.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tony Roberts Dies: ‘Serpico', ‘Annie Hall' & Broadway Actor Was 85
Tony Roberts, the actor who collaborated with such filmmakers as Woody Allen and Sidney Lumet, has died. He was 85. The Broadway actor's daughter and sole survivor Nicole Barley confirmed Roberts death to The New York Times after he died on Friday at his Manhattan home following complications with lung cancer. More from Deadline 2025 Deaths Photo Gallery: Hollywood & Media Obituaries 2024 Hollywood & Media Deaths: Photo Gallery & Obituaries Irv Gotti Dies: Murder Inc. Records Founder Who Produced For DMX, Aaliyah & More Was 54 In Play It Again, Sam (1972), Annie Hall (1977), Stardust Memories (1980) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Roberts was known for playing Allen's nonchalant friend, balancing the auteur and star's anxious onscreen presence. The actor also appeared in Lumet's Serpico (1973) and Just Tell Me What You Want (1980). Roberts' other film credits include Star Spangled Girl (1971), The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974), Victor/Victoria (1982) and Amityville 3-D (1983), as well as episodes of shows like The Love Boat, Trapper John, M.D., Matlock, The Carol Burnett Show, All My Children and Law & Order. Roberts is also known for his stage acting, appearing on Broadway in such shows as Barefoot in the Park, Sugar, Victor/Victoria, Cabaret and Xanadu. DEADLINE RELATED VIDEO: Best of Deadline 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery 'The Apprentice' Oscar Nominees Sebastian Stan & Jeremy Strong On Why It's 'More Of A Horror Movie' With "Monstrous Egos" 'Prime Target' Release Guide: When Are New Episodes Available On Apple TV+?
