Sharon Stone: It’s Better with the Lights On
https://lebeauleblog.com/2019/12/17/sharon-stone-its-better-with-the-lights-on/
Movieline magazine loved Sharon Stone. Her career lined up pretty well with the publication’s hey day and she could be counted on for a few spicy quotes. As a result, Stone frequently graced Movieline’s cover. But even before Stone was a household name, she had an “in” with the magazine.share
Here is a profile piece on Stone from the December 1989 issue before most readers had any idea who the actress was. When this story ran, Stone was best known for movies like Action Jackson and Above the Law. Total Recall was still in production.
Over Mu Shu Fantasy at Chopstix, Sharon Stone tells true tales of the Hollywood casting couch.
In Hollywood, anyone you’ve known for 15 minutes is considered a friend, and if you’re still on speaking terms after three months (roughly the time it takes to make a film, and therefore the average length of all relationships), they qualify as an old friend. I’ve known Sharon Stone since we met at Bono’s — so long ago that Sonny Bono was not the mayor of Palm Springs, but a local lousy restaurateur — so, I guess, she’s practically family.
Waiting for the Auto Club to come rescue me at my broken down jeep out on Pacific Coast Highway, I think how I hate to keep her waiting at Chopstix on Melrose-because my being late ruins her entrance, which is something she knows a thing or two about. I recall that Christmas party when Sharon swept in fashionably late, dropped her floor-length black mink in a pool at her heels, threw her arms in the air above her tiny glittering mini-dress, and announced, “All right I’m here, let the fun begin!”
When I finally arrive, Sharon is waiting for me outside Chopstix, which despite a clever overhaul still looks to me like the art deco gas station it once was. “Nice wheels,” she says, airily suggesting she’s never seen a beaten up taxi before, let alone been in one.
As she once told me, “I learned long ago that if you behave as if you expect people to give you diamonds, sometimes they do.”
At out table outside on the patio, we order Mu Shu Fantasy, Wild West Hollywood Dumplings, and Take A Bao. I wonder aloud how someone with Sharon’s champagne tastes adjusted to months in Mexico with Arnold Schwarzenegger making Total Recall. “In Mexico City, the problem isn’t confronting poverty, it’s confronting earthquakes,” she says. “Though we have them all the time in L.A. there’s nothing like a 6.8 while you’re on the 39th floor of a hotel.”
Does this means that she’s glad to be back? She puts down her mineral water and sighs. “This town….breeds insanity,” she says. Then she tells me she’s just learned that another actress got the role she read for in Havana. I ask her what other near-misses there’ve been that mattered. “When I screen-tested for, but did not get, Someone to Watch Over Me, I’ll admit I wondered ‘What more do I have to do? Marry someone famous, someone influential?’ “I point out that maybe that’s the case, and she replies, “Then I don’t want it that much. My private life is not about business, not about my career.”
Warming to the topic at hand, I ask Sharon-who’s starred in such movies as Irreconcilable Differences, Above the Law, Action Jackson, and on TV in “War and Remembrance” — whether she thinks the so-called “casting couch” really exists. “When I first hit town,” she says, “a big producer — I won’t tell you his name, but his initials are S.B. — met with me in his office, and said he could make me a big star, and then unzipped his pants.” And? “I have never laughed so hard in all my life, which is not the reaction he was hoping for. The casting couch exists but it doesn’t lead anywhere, certainly not to being cast. No one is going to stake a multi-million-dollar budget on the fact that someone’s good in bed.”
What advice, then, does she have for actresses who want to try their luck in Hollywood? “Always carry a book,” she says. “I get so bored on most of my dates, I slip into the ladies’ room to read for awhile.
“Not that I’m dating all that much,” she says. “I’m not as approachable as I was. I have a certain coolness as a result of being steamrollered by my divorce.” I hadn’t noticed anything of the kind: just yesterday, when she was here cavorting on the sidewalk for a photo shoot to accompany this interview, a biker who pulled out of traffic to watch turned out to be the handsome French model Olivier, and he was only too glad to loan us his Harley for Sharon to climb on. “Okay, it’s not that hard to meet people,” she admits, “but I want to know someone before I go out on a date.”
Sharon waves away the waiter who’s asked if we want to try something called Ginger Crème Brulee Surprise, and continues, “Besides, now that Helena’s is gone, there’s nowhere really great to go. Though I was never actually a member, I liked that Helena’s was a private club where you could eat and dance with your friends, without strangers hitting on you.