New York Post
At 59, Sharon Stone is making her big comeback
SHE was one of the world’s biggest star before a stroke almost killed her. Now Sharon Stone is back in the limelight and she isn’t holding back.
By Robert Rorke
JANUARY 19, 20182:43PM
WHEN Sharon Stone presented at this year’s Golden Globes, it was an announcement that the Basic Instinct star — whose uncrossing of her legs during a San Francisco police interrogation on-screen made men hit the pause button on their remotes 25 years ago — was back.
Wearing a sleek, black, floor-length, fitted dress with sheer, geometric cutouts by a daring Brazilian designer, Vitor Zerbinato, her shorn blonde hair swept back off her face, she dazzled the crowd.
“His was the first dress I tried on. It fit like a dream. The netting, the sheer part of it, was the right colour,” she says.
Not bad for an actress turning 60 in March, but especially remarkable considering that, in 2001, Stone suffered a stroke and subsequent cerebral haemorrhage that lasted nine days and left her temporarily unable to read, among other difficulties.
“Me and Cher. We’re cockroaches,” she tells The Post.
Stone has flown to New York from her comfy LA home, once owned by Montgomery Clift, to promote her new HBO series, Mosaic. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, it’s a six-part tale of romantic deception and foul play. Stone plays successful children’s book author Olivia Lake, whose trophy home in Utah ski country puts her in the crosshairs of a very insistent conman (Frederick Weller). Complicating matters are Lake’s unrequited feelings for an aspiring artist (Garrett Hedlund) she regrets offering to mentor.
It’s a complex character that allows Stone, an Oscar nominee for the Martin Scorsese film Casino, a chance to show off her range, which has sometimes been overshadowed by her bombshell credentials.
“I think she’s a great character and he’s a great director,” says Stone, who calls Lake “imaginative,” with “the ability to make something happen”.
“People gravitate toward that. In the case of Garrett’s character, he wants to be a better artist and admires Olivia as an artist. With Fred’s character, she has the ability to stay with him, while a part of her really did understand there was a bit of a conman to him. I think she also understood the broken part of him. That’s [what] makes him love her.”
In person, Stone gives off a patrician air, with her steel-blue eyes and aquiline profile. But once she warms up, she becomes extremely candid, especially when it comes to discussing some of her leading men.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, with whom she tangled in Total Recall, “taught me how to do press,” she says. Of her Casino co-star Robert De Niro, she says, “That was my dream, to work with Bob. And I can say that I was not disappointed for a second”.
Sylvester Stallone, whom she acted opposite in The Specialist, is “hilarious. And complicated. And I think he got really tired of being underestimated. And I have a lot of compassion for him.”
She extravagantly praises her Basic Instinct co-star Michael Douglas as “one of the great people who understood humanitarian causes and philanthropic causes before anyone else. He stood up for mental health, he stood up for things long before anyone else did. I so respect and admire his courage. And being adamant about things way, way, way before it was fashionable to do so. And he’s brilliant. He’s hilarious. And he’s tough and hardworking. And he said to me, ‘The villain is the best part. Have the best time.’”
Mention her Sphere co-star Dustin Hoffman, and Stone’s superlatives desert her. “No comment,” she says.
One of her favourite things to talk about is her three adopted sons, Roan, 17; Laird, 12; and Quinn, 11. When they watch TV together, they tune in to Young Sheldon (“adorable,” she says), The Good Doctor and The Blacklist. Mostly, these boys are jocks, and Stone found ways for them to burn off all their energy when they were young.
“I put them in karate — it’s called Karate Kids — when they were really little,” she says. “They were kind of dangerous. They’d get thrown out two or three times a class. It was good discipline. And instead of time-outs I gave them meditations. It helped them to become very centred. They’re always doing what their sport is at school, whether it’s basketball or soccer … They’re super active athletically, and I think that’s really good.”
Now that Stone is feeling strong enough to work again, she has signed on for a few films. In Sunny, from Norwegian director Eva Sørhaug, “I’m going to play a heroin dealer,” she says. “It’s an American production, but we’re going to shoot in Toronto. It’s very tough. It’s in that Scorsese vein.”
She’s also looking forward to a comedy co-starring Bette Midler and a man Stone will not name. “I play a grifter who comes in and just takes over their lives,” she says, laughing.
At the height of her fame, Stone appeared on hundreds of magazine covers, which she displayed in a suite of offices that she ultimately let go of when she was recovering from her stroke. “They’re in giant Tupperware containers,” she says. “I have a lot of the majors. All the Vogues and the Harper’s Bazaars and the Vanity Fairs and the Elles and the Peoples. We had maybe 100 magazine covers.”
That part of her career may be in storage, but Stone has not forgotten how to dress the part of a movie star.
“I work with a wonderful young stylist named Lindsey Dupuis. She came into my life and my sister Kelly Stone’s life through our charity, Planet Hope, for homeless and abused women,” she says.
“I like to look at designers who are not just your basic Dior, Prada, Gucci thing. I have had other people bring me trendy clothes and just insist that I try them out. I’m not much of a trender in fashion. I like classic fashion or fashion that’s a modern take on a classic.”
This article was originally published on The New York Post
