Sharon Stone Once Revealed She Made Herself a ‘Complete Wreck’ Doing a ‘Casino’ Scene
Actor Sharon Stone did a lot to prepare for her Oscar-nominated role in Martin Scorsese’s Casino. But she committed to the part so much physically that at one point it turned her into a complete wreck.
Sharon Stone was told to stay away from ‘Casino’
Stone was used to playing characters with questionable morals. Her breakthrough role in Basic Instinct, for instance, was of a manipulative and potentially dangerous femme fatale suspected of murder. But still, people close to her felt her Casino character was so vile that they urged her to avoid the role.
“‘This woman is so unsympathetic,'” she recalled being told in an interview with The Guardian. “‘She ties her kid to the bed, gets loaded and does coke…Sharon, we don’t think you should go there.'”
But eventually, Stone found opportunity in the role. She expressed her frustration with being perceived a certain way over the years. Scorsese gave her the chance to change that perception with Casino.
“I think for a long time people just did not know what to do with me,” she said. “I looked like a Barbie doll and then I had this voice like I spend my life in a bar, and I said things that were alarming and had ideas that didn’t make sense. And finally I got together with Marty and Bob and they were like, ‘Give it all to us, baby, just let her rip if you’ve got it, we want it, let’s see what you can do.'”
Sharon Stone made herself a ‘complete wreck’ for ‘Casino’
Stone held her role playing opposite of co-star Robert De Niro in high regard. To her, the movie was a gratifying experience for two reasons.
“One, because I see the film and I realise…… it’s true! I haven’t been deluding myself all these years,” she said. “I really can do it. And because I got up to bat with my dream people, the one actor that all my career I strived to work with, that was the apex for me… and then Marty… And then to get the pat on your back from your peers is always pretty great. You know, you don’t get a lot of that.”
To maximize her performance, the Catwoman actor was willing to put even her own physical wellbeing at risk for the Scorsese project.
“I nearly actually physically killed myself making Casino,” she once told Prestige (via Female First). “We did the death scene on the last day because Scorsese knew I wanted to get just so completely skinny and out of it. In the final week I didn’t eat, I didn’t do anything, I just made myself a complete wreck so that I could get skinny, skinny, skinny, skinny and down to nothing. I lost so much weight.”
Sharon Stone’s dream was to hold her own against Robert De Niro on the big screen
Perhaps one of the biggest highlights of doing Casino was Stone being able to fulfill a lifelong dream of hers. Acting alongside co-lead Robert De Niro, Stone was ready to prove she belonged on the same screen as the star.
“I used to tell my acting teacher, he’s like, ‘What’s your goal?’ And I’m like, ‘I want to be able to sit across the table from Robert De Niro and hold my own,'” she told The View. “And ultimately, there was a scene in the movie, like one scene, where I literally slide into a booth and I’m across the table from Bob. It’s a very kind of confrontational, weird scene. And I remember that night when I slid in across the table from him. One of the lines he has is, ‘You’re a really good actress.’ And I remember thinking in the scene, ‘You bet ya. You bet ya.'”
