POSING in raunchy red undies at the age of 66, Sharon Stone revisited her most famous scene, from 1992 thriller Basic Instinct – saying women can be sexy at any age.
But after an online backlash over the glam Instagram shots that she posted earlier this month, the feisty actress has now laid into her critics.
At a Cannes charity gala this week she fumed: “We get to grow older. It’s ridiculous that you’re only supposed to be OK when you’re 20.
“What the f***.”
And she revealed that the idea to strip off for the shots, which she captioned “BASICALLY . . . YOURS” on her Instagram post, had come from her stylist and had been completely spontaneous.
But for one who seems so confident in the public eye, Sharon also told of her career-long fear of being shot dead by an obsessive fan — which was sparked by a chat with Sylvester Stallone.
She said: “What Sly said to me is that suddenly you are walking down the street, everyone is doing this (reaching into their pocket) and you don’t know if they are going for the pen or the gun.
“That’s what becomes so unsettling, because everybody is doing that, but you don’t know why.
“You feel constantly in this unsettled place that you always have to figure it out and you have to fix it and be ready.
“You are always trying to figure out what everybody else’s intentions are.”
Sharon’s fears were worsened by the trauma of her breakout role in Basic Instinct turning her into an overnight celebrity.
The movie, about a retired rock star’s murder, became one of the most talked about in cinema history.
Key to its success was the iconic scene in which Sharon’s character, bisexual crime novelist Catherine Tramell, uncrosses her legs while being questioned by homicide detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas), revealing that she is not wearing any underwear.
Sharon’s blonde bombshell looks helped her become a global sex symbol, while her innate talent led to a Best Actress Golden Globe nomination.
The film’s brutal stabbing scenes with an ice pick led one critic to praise her for “doing more for female empowerment than any feminist rally”.
But Sharon says it was only when she arrived to watch the first screening at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival that she realised how unprepared she was for fame.
She told the Don’t Shoot The Messenger podcast: “I didn’t have a make-up artist or a hairdresser. I had nothing, not even a security person.
“Imagine being in Cannes with Basic Instinct and no security.
“I get to this huge event and there’s fans everywhere, a red carpet the size of a double street and all the paparazzi are all in black tie.
“We all go to the end of the red carpet, me and Michael Douglas and everyone, but the fans start screaming, ‘Shaaaa-ron!’ — and there’s tens of thousands of them.
“I’m in a day dress that I bought off the rack at a south Beverly Hills shop, with a couple of sunflowers. It was a madhouse.
“When I came out and got in that car with my two friends and tried to get back to the hotel, there were so many people on top of the car that my friends lay me on the ground because the car was being caved in.”
She added: “It’s really something when you are in a car and the fans start.
“They will literally pull the bumpers right off the car. They will rip the licence plates off and climb on the car, to the point where it’s black inside and you can’t see.
“I’ve been in it where they have to call Swat (a police tactical team) to get the car out from under the people.
I am OK that people say that I am difficult or a diva or whatever.
Sharon Stone
“I’ve been in it to the point that when I get in the building my clothes are literally torn into shreds, literally in pieces.”
Sharon also had harsh words for Hollywood bigwigs who spent years fighting against her drive for women to receive equal pay.
She told the same podcast, hosted by movie expert Kevin Goetz.
“When I ask for more money, people want to say, ‘Well, she’s just about the money’.
“I will get a call saying, ‘This is a $100million movie and we are going to pay this leading man, who frankly no-one has ever heard of, $7million but we want to pay you, to be the leading actress, $500,000.
“I will say, ‘No, I made $500,000 on Basic Instinct 30 years ago and now I’ve done 100 films and you’re going to pay this unknown guy this. I think you should pay us each $3.5million, because I think that’s fair and reasonable’.”
She added: “I am OK that people say that I am difficult or a diva or whatever.
“The Screen Actors Guild can pull every single one of my work records. I am on time and I know my lines.
“There is no trouble getting me out of the make-up trailer.
“Martin Scorsese said to me, ‘I’ve had actresses I can’t get out of the make-up trailer. I’ve never had one I can’t get into the trailer, until I met you’.
“No director that worked with me will say I’m difficult — it’s only those that haven’t worked with me.”
Sharon was one of four children raised by former factory worker Joe Stone and his wife Dorothy, an accountant, in the small town of Meadville in rural Pennsylvania.
I’ve been brought in by studios for their casting sessions over the years, because they know I’ve a nose for it.
Sharon Stone
She recalls having a “hardscrabble” childhood. For the family dinner her parents grew their own vegetables and hunted game, which she often found hanging from her swing when she got home from school.
Sharon says she was painfully shy until she started competing in beauty pageants at 19.
When she took part in the Miss Pennsylvania contest in 1976, she says boxer Muhammad Ali tried to recruit her to appear in his movie The Greatest, a dramatisation of his life story.
Sharon said: “Ali called my dad Joe, and he said, ‘Mr Stone, I saw your daughter in the pageant and I want her to be in The Greatest’. My dad said, ‘Well, Mr Ali, how very nice of you to call, but my daughter is very intelligent and she’s going back to college, she’s not going to be in movies’.
“Ali said, ‘Mr Stone, you can hide your daughter under a bushel basket but she’s still going to be a movie star’.”
Sure enough, after college and a brief modelling stint, Sharon moved to New York to pursue an acting career — and at 20 she secured a brief role in her first movie, the Woody Allen film Stardust Memories.
And over the course of her 40-plus years in movies she appears to have become a talent spotter herself.
For her 1995 Western The Quick And The Dead, which she co-produced, she cast both a young Leonardo DiCaprio and a then unknown Russell Crowe. She said: “I wanted Russell Crowe when no-one knew him at all.
“He had done a movie in Australia called Romper Stomper and I watch everything and I said, ‘He’s going to be our next Richard Burton, he will be unbelievable, he’s very good’.
“I knew it when I laid eyes on Leo. They had to push for two weeks to get Russell, because he was on another film in Australia, and they didn’t want to pay Leo.
“Leo would have got a million dollars because men make a lot more, even when they’re new.
“What I said is, ‘If you push for Russell, I will pay Leo out of my own salary’, and that’s what we did.
“I’ve been brought in by studios for their casting sessions over the years, because they know I’ve a nose for it.”
