Sharon’s fab instincts Still got it at 60!
Sharon spills on love, loss and illness
Her infamous leg-crossing scene in 1992’s Basic Instinct made Sharon Stone one of the most talked-about stars in Hollywood – and on the eve of turning 60, the provocative screen siren is no less controversial when it comes to parenting her children.
“I’m pretty open with my boys,” confides the actress, referring to Roan, 17, from her marriage to Phil Bronstein, and Laird, 12, and Quinn, 11, who she adopted as a single mother. She explains, “When my 17-year-old and his friends talk about hook-ups, I’m very clear that if a hook-up means you are having sex, you have to speak to the person the next day – you don’t send a text! You have to have real contact with anyone you hooked up with, whatever that entailed, and it has to be respectful contact.” The actress and longtime Aids campaigner also doesn’t mince words when she talks to her boys about safe sex. “I’ve discussed this with my kids since they were very young,” she adds. “Condoms are essential. I know all these things happen with children very young, so when the girls come over to the house, I talk to them and my sons hate it!” Sharon got her first big break opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1990 action hit Total Recall. Then after revealing she was wearing no underwear when uncrossing her legs in the infamous interrogation scene with Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct, she became a Hollywood sensation. Eventually, she overcame
her sexy stereotype by winning a Golden Globe and earning an Oscar nomination in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 film Casino.
She went on to star in movies such as The Quick and the Dead,
Last Dance and The Mighty, before tragedy struck in 2001, when the actress suffered a shocking brain aneurysm that almost killed her.
“It ruptured with such strength that the blood flow hit the nerve that feeds my ear and my eye,” she explains. “I had a five percent chance of living at all, let alone regaining all my faculties. For years, I would lose vision in my right eye and it would just start to go dark. I couldn’t even write my name for almost three years!”
Taking on TV
On the long road to recovery, Sharon agreed to appear in a few episodes of S VU: Special Victims
Unit in 2010. “When I started back, it was really humbling and strange running around as a guest star on a TV show because I didn’t know how to do that after I’d been starring in big feature films,” she admits.
“It was hard because I’d lost my photographic memory and I didn’t even know how to learn lines. I had to learn to read, write and speak without a stutter, which I got after the stroke, and it took about seven years for it all to be straightened out.”
Now she’s enjoying a comeback in the murder-mystery TV drama
Mosaic as a wealthy philanthropist who is murdered and appears in flashback as viewers try to identify the killer. But there is no hint of bitterness in her voice when asked about the challenges of her first starring role in a decade.
“I’m able to learn 30 pages a day of dialogue in Mosaic, so it’s a big victory for me,” she says proudly. “I have a lot of gratitude about all this.”
When talk turns to her 60th birthday on March 10, she gets emotional.
“There are a lot of things I wish I’d known when I was younger. I didn’t know that no matter how good of a partner, wife or spouse you are, it doesn’t mean you are going to have a good marriage or a good life,” she says, referring to her nasty divorce from former newspaper editor Phil, 67, who took full custody of their son until recently.
“I also didn’t know I was going to have a stroke and a nine-day brain haemorrhage, which changed my life forever. When I was 50, I was happy and showing off my body. Now I’m just happy my kids are healthy and I got to live, and I will be happy and grateful when I get to 60!”
Becoming the latest big-screen star to turn to television for a well-written female role, Sharon can’t resist looking back on her association with another cultural icon that’s made a comeback.
Joking about her role
in the original Will & Grace, she teases, “Now we’re both back, I’m available to return as the therapist on [the rebooted] Will&
Grace too!” Though she looks at least 15 years short of her six decades, Sharon caused a stir recently when she was seen kissing a much younger man at a screening of
Mosaic in New York. However, she refuses to confirm if there is someone special in her life today.
“I can say that I’m not lacking for love in my life,” she teases. “The only way I’ve kept my sanity is to know who my friends are – and to keep things private. I continue to work and to survive.”