Sharon Stone Says a Director Once Demanded She Sit In His Lap On Set
Sharon Stone has played characters who don’t take any guff in movies like Basic Instinct, The Quick and the Dead, Casino and many more. Likewise, in real life she’s had to stand up to bullies in Hollywood. Stone is telling all in her new memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, out March 30. In an excerpt published by Vanity Fair, Stone described one director’s inappropriate request and her response.
A director asked Sharon Stone to sit in his lap
Stone described one director who demanded she sit on his lap when he directed her. She said it was just after she’d adopted her son, Laird.
Even with the worst directors, like the one who wouldn’t direct me because I refused to sit in his lap to take direction. 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. Yes, this was a multimillion-dollar studio film, of which I was the star, and the studio didn’t say or do anything. I just kept coming to work and spending the day constantly getting retouched in my trailer and being with my baby.
Sharon Stone, The Beauty of Living Twice
This was not one of Sharon Stone’s well known movies
Stone adopted Laird in 2005. That narrows the list of directors down somewhat, but Stone would not get any more specific.
“Of course the film was a bomb,” Stone wrote. “The level of insecurity and unprofessionalism, and I would guess drug abuse, required to make those kinds of choices never leads to good work. But as a superstar, which at that point I was, and a woman, I had no say. That was how it was in my day. Even a high, abusive director had more power than I did.”
Some men stood up for her
Stone also told stories of men sticking up for her in abusive situations. She did name the movies on which she had support.
Not to say there weren’t great men in my day too. Men who would come in and shut the show down when things were going wrong, men who would talk to me. Those men helped us make great pictures. Those men helped us make great pictures like Casino. Those men shut down a show I was on when the director was so high on cocaine he was spinning. Now that same director has sobered up and gone on to do fabulous and important work. Not with me, of course, as I aided in the shutdown.
Sharon Stone, The Beauty of Living Twice
Sharon Stone would still accept apologies
Stone describes even more harrowing Hollywood incidents in just the passage Vanity Fair printed. However, the section concludes with Stone offering to accept some sincere apologies, should perpetrators wish to make amends.
To some of the less violent trespassers of my personal space—the ones who have threatened to fire me if I didn’t put out, for example—I suggested recently that if they would only sit with me and talk it out, I would let it go, without revealing their offensive behavior. I believed that a kind of truth-and-reconciliation discussion might be a good start. But so far, not one of them has manned up. It seemed like a more-than-fair offer, considering the humiliating and offensive state of my workplace. We must begin somewhere. There were always beasts. They weren’t always men. We tried to stay out of their way. There were always perverts. We tried to warn one another.
Sharon Stone, The Beauty of Living Twice
Source: Vanity Fair
