Sharon Stone Needed the Paramedics After Passing Out During a Violent and Bloody ‘Basic Instinct’ Scene
Actor Sharon Stone had a bit of a difficult time shooting Basic Instinct. Although the film catapulted her to superstardom, there were a few scenes Stone found rough to get through. In particular, there was one shot that affected Stone so much that she needed treatment by the paramedics.
Sharon Stone had no problems shooting the more sexual scenes in ‘Basic Instinct’
Basic Instinct’s sexual content was the reason many A-List actors turned it down at the time. Stone’s Basic Instinct partner, Michael Douglas, however, believed that the role of Catherine Tramell offered a great female character. But he also understood why some had reservations.
“Women are often caught between politics and a (particular) role. But I thought that as dangerous as the film was, it was also that good of a women’s part. The irony is that for many male actors, playing a good heavy has made their careers,” he once said in an interview with the LA Times.
Whereas most female actors were put off by its graphic nature, Stone had little concern about it. In fact, her sex scenes were the ones she had the least bit of trouble with. Perhaps because she already had experience in that department.
“I wore this glue-on cover thing, I don’t know what you call it. And Michael was very chivalrous and the crew was unbelievably (supportive). . . . The first time I did (a nude scene) in Irreconcilable Differences, where I dropped this cape and showed my breasts, I heard this sound that I realized was my heart pounding in my temples. It was so bizarre,” she said.
Sharon Stone needed the paramedics after shooting a violent ‘Basic Instinct’ scene
The scenes Stone really had a difficult time with were the more violent aspects of the film. In particular, she and Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven cited a murder scene to be extremely hard on Stone.
The scene had Stone “naked on top of a guy she didn’t know at all and she had to stab hard with an ice pick to make it look realistic and we spurted blood all over her breasts, which is not the most fun situation,” Verhoeven said. “I’m not sure why she identified with that scene so much, but she had a bad time there.”
The incident was so grueling that Stone eventually needed medical attention to help her breathe.
“I was like passing out,” she explained. “I’d do it and the blood stuff would come out and they’d have to bring the paramedics in and lie me on the floor and give me oxygen. My best friend, Mimi (Craven), who always comes when I have to do the scary parts was there, lying next to me telling jokes and I’m breathing oxygen and laughing my ass off. We had to loop the whole thing later.”
Sharon Stone really believed she murdered her ‘Basic instinct co-star
The ice-pick murder scenes took an even extra toll on the actor because she was convinced she really committed a murder. In Stone’s memoir, the Catwoman actor discussed how the way her co-star responded to her stabbing him left her hysterical.
“During the shooting of the opening stabbing sequence of the film, at one point we cut and the actor did not respond. He just lay there, unconscious. I began to panic; I thought that the retractable fake ice pick had failed to retract and that I had in fact killed him,” she wrote in her memoir The Beauty of Living Twice (via Vanity Fair). “The fury of the sequence coupled with the director screaming, ‘Hit him, harder, harder!’ and, ‘More blood, more blood!’ as the guy under the bed pumped more fake blood through the prosthetic chest, had already made me weak.”
Fortunately for Stone, she soon learned the actor was relatively fine. She just accidentally knocked her co-star unconscious. But that revelation did little to calm her nerves.
“It seemed I had hit the actor so many times in the chest that he had passed out. I was horrified, naked, and stained with fake blood. And now this. It seemed like there was no line I wouldn’t be asked to skate up to the very edge of to make this film,” she added.
