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Her years out of the spotlight have not diminished her famous forthrightness. ‘If Steven Soderbergh had asked me to come and read the phone book, I’d probably have done it,’ she says, breezily. ‘But I feel really lucky that he asked me to do something that was so personal and so raw and so revealing, because, frankly, I’ve been through hell and it was great to be able to bring all of that insecurity and compassion to the screen.’
She freely admits she was terrified about returning to acting. ‘Fuck, yes, I absolutely felt insecure,’ she cries. ‘But I certainly didn’t want anyone to think I did. I was asking myself: “What’s going to happen if I can’t do it? What’s going to happen if I fall apart?”’
This was more than simple performance anxiety. ‘ I lost my short- and long-term memory when I had the stroke, and it took me a long time to get it back, because I had to learn to learn,’ she explains. ‘I was such a hot shot, back in the day,’ she continues, with a hollow laugh. ‘I had a photographic memory, so I didn’t even have to learn lines. Coming back to it, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.’
She plays Olivia Lake, a famous, wealthy children’s author, living in a well-heeled and arty ski resort town in Utah. As described by the show’s screenwriter, Ed Solomon, Olivia is ‘a larger-than-life woman who, when she comes into the room, the molecules shift and everything focuses on her; a woman who uses people up and spits them out’. When Olivia is murdered, there are two main suspects – her con-man lover, Eric, played by Frederick Weller, and her young lodger/dogsbody, Joel (Garrett Hedlund).
Attractive, flirtatious, single and struggling to cope with ageing, Olivia is a messier, more
realistic woman than is frequently seen on TV. ‘ She’s everything, isn’t she?’ Sharon beams, standing up and crossing the room to examine the refreshments, where she begins popping grapes into her mouth. ‘She’s needy, vulnerable and narcissistic, and she’s frozen – she’s stuck and sort of disintegrating.’
And, refreshingly, Olivia’s unmarried and childless status is never discussed. ‘ We don’t know if she was married before or what her other life could’ve been – we just kind of pick her up mid-stream,’ nods Sharon. ‘ We just let her be. We don’t have to look under her petticoat to know she’s a woman, at long last.’
Sharon’s own personal circumstances could not be more different. The La-based actor, who’s been married and divorced twice (to TV producer Michael Greenburg and newspaper executive Phil Bronstein), is a single mother to three adopted sons, 17 yearold Roan, 12 year-old Laird, and Quinn, 11.
‘Having three kids certainly will change your reality,’ she chuckles, settling back into a chair, languid as a cat, putting her pointy, plum- coloured boots up on the table between us. ‘And I think that not trying to be a girl and allowing yourself to be a grown-up woman is also very helpful.’
Whether she is currently dating anyone, she will not divulge. ‘ I was just not that girl who was told that a man would define me,’ she says. ‘I was told that if I wanted to have a man in my life, it wouldn’t be an arrangement, it would be an actual partnership. And those are hard to find.’
Sharon is, of course, also returning to an industry in turmoil, with women in Hollywood finally speaking up about the abuse and harassment they have endured from some of its most powerful men. ‘ I hope he goes to jail,’ she has said of Harvey Weinstein. And though she has since declined to talk specifics or details, in a television interview last month, Sharon laughed, long and hard, when she was asked if she’d ‘ ever been made to feel uncomfortable’. ‘I’ve been in this business for 40 years,’ she said, eventually. ‘Can you imagine the business I stepped into 40 years ago, looking like I look? From Nowhere, Pennsylvania. I didn’t come here with any protection – I have seen it all.’
The daughter of an accountant and a factory worker, at 19, Sharon quit college and moved to New York to become a model, even though, as she has recently admitted, ‘I always thought I had the worst body.’
Modelling led to acting, and she spent the 1980s playing small roles in films such as Police Academy 4, until her big break came opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall, in 1990. ‘No one thought I was sexy,’ she said last month, reflecting on her early years. ‘And probably, I’m not, or I wasn’t. But I was smart enough to realise that I had to seem sexy.’ So, she posed for Playboy, winning the role in Basic Instinct off the back of it.
Her second act may have been some time coming, but signs are that it has been worth the wait. After we meet, rumours begin to circulate that Sharon may appear in a potential third Sex And The City film ( following Kim Cattrall’s departure after a very public rift with Sarah Jessica Parker).
She has signed on for several more movies too, including The Tale Of The Allergist’s Wife, alongside Bette Midler, and as a heroin dealer in Sunny, from Norwegian director Eva Sørhaug. There’s also an as-yetuntitled project, which may see her reunited with Casino director Martin Scorsese.
All of which seems a very positive place to be as she turns 60. ‘I’ve got a manager and an agent again, and I’m going back to work,’ she declares, happily. Ms Stone, it’s good to have you back. ‘ Mosaic’ is available to watch now on Sky Atlantic and Now TV
is a psychologist and author of How To Do Relationships