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Sharon
Stone reputedly has an IQ of 154. This fact, though
dutifully cited in most biographies of the actress,
is typically mentioned only in passing as a kind of
quirky kink - or kinky quirk, depending -
in the rendering of an otherwise drop-dead gorgeous
screen goddess. But, let's be honest, that is quite
an IQ, no matter what you look like; being in the top
2% of the country, it qualified Stone to apply for membership
in the intellectually elite MENSA society, which she
did, passing the admittance test with flying colors.
Like
many super-intelligent and creative people, Stone has
her problems, too. Now, some of these problems the award-winning
actress and producer would most likely acknowledge,
and some, one suspects, she would not. Take for example
her reputation. Stone's combination of gusty self-promotion
and professional risk-taking has not endeared her to
some in Hollywood, who see her as opportunistic, and,
to use a fatigued cliché, bitchy. Articles about her
are sprinkled with predatory phrases like "clawed her
way" and glancing derogatory descriptors like "ruthless"
and "brazen." Not a real problem, one would concede;
after all, celebrities like Roseanne (whose stock in
trade is bitchiness) and Sean "Bad Boy" Penn
have braved similar character recriminations to become
infamously famous. Being difficult in a difficult place
like Hollywood isn't really so bad, is it?
However,
Stone's spotty cinematic résumé is something else again.
No question of semantics here: she has been in some
major-league clunkers. With missteps like Deadly
Blessing (1981), Above the Law (1988), Year
of the Gun (1991), Intersection (1994), and
The Quick and the Dead (1995) to her discredit,
the fact that she has logged screen-time with Bob De
Niro starts to look less like her due and more like
a fluke. Still, by virtue of her powerful presence and
hard-won respect, the actress commands a large-dollar
payday and is increasingly sought after for important
roles.
Stone
was born the second child of blue-collar parents in
small-town Pennsylvania in 1958. A precocious, not to
say brilliant, child, she entered college on a scholarship
at age 15 to study creative writing. After performing
a dramatic rendition of the Gettysburg Address at a
local fair, the bright young woman came to the attention
of beauty pageant promoters. It was eventually decided
that she didn't possess the requisite malleable personality
to succeed at the beauty-queen racket, and someone suggested
that she try modeling instead, a profession, it is presumed,
in which complicating matters of intelligence and character
don't get in the way. Stone's family, to its credit,
had her back; her dad, she has said proudly, "never
raised me to believe that being a woman inhibited any
of my choices or my possibilities to succeed." As for
Stone's homemaker mother Dorothy, she cherished a hope
that her gifted daughter could escape mediocrity and
get out into the big world.
Modeling
certainly did that for Stone, but it also bored her
to tears, so she started undertaking small acting jobs
on the side. Her first film role of any note was a fleeting,
and admittedly undemanding, turn as a pretty woman in
Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980). From
there, Stone embarked on a lengthy series of weensy
roles in worse-than-so-so movies in which she purportedly
did not overly endear herself to crews and fellow cast
members. After a good ten years of schlock like Bolero,
Police Academy 4, and Action Jackson,
she made the most of her butt-kicking role as Arnold
Schwarzenegger's "wife" in Total Recall (1990).
The part attracted a modicum of good notice, and she
further stoked the publicity train's engines by posing
for a nude pictorial in Playboy, thereby ensuring
a heaping helping of Tinseltown notoriety.
About
that same time, the director and producers of a psychological
thriller called Basic Instinct (1992) were casting
about for an actress to play the tasty lead role of
bisexual wacko killer Catherine Tramell. They considered
Michelle Pfeiffer (!) and Julia Roberts (!!) for the
part before Stone's name came up. The part was as good
as hers when she showed up for the reading with her
hair styled becomingly in a French twist and dressed
in a stunning Grace Kelly suit. The film's now-infamous
interrogation scene, in which Stone uncrosses and recrosses
her legs, revealing to the world just what didn't
come between her and her tight dress, clinched her reputation
as a bad-girl actress.
After
Basic Instinct, Stone became one of the hottest
properties in Hollywood, with parts coming fast and
furious, even if they were primarily of the sex-tramp
variety. She undressed again in the much-anticipated
Sliver, but even her lovely form couldn't help
the doomed picture's abysmal reception. Stone had succeeded
in carving out an attention-grabbing Hollywood persona,
to be sure, but she had also worked hard at learning
the craft of acting, having undergone many years of
serious dramatic study - and she wanted the kind
of straight parts that would challenge her talent. Tough,
confident, glamorous in an Old Hollywood sort of way,
and above all smart (it is said that she quickly assesses
the intelligence of each interviewer, and adjusts her
behavior accordingly; she once sat through a New
York Times interview chatting blithely on about
Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged - while
wearing a see-through blouse), Stone commandeered the
brush when it came to painting her own starlet image.
That
the actress' tenacity was starting to pay off became
apparent when she won a starring role opposite Robert
De Niro in Martin Scorsese's 1995 film Casino;
she applied herself assiduously to perfecting her honest
portrayal of opportunistic hustler Ginger, impressing
the film's crew and A-list cast with her professionalism
and commitment, and earning a long sought-after Oscar
nomination and the respect that goes along with it for
her efforts. Riding high on her Academy approval, Stone
started her own production company, and, with director
Sam Raimi, made The Quick and the Dead, a quirky
Western that promptly keeled over at the box office.
Although
some of Stone's mid-'90s efforts did not perform well
commercially or critically in this country - witness
the truly terrible death-row drama Last Dance
- her struggles to maintain her credibility have
not been in vain. She has proved bankable internationally,
largely due to the fact that she is actively involved
in overseas promotional efforts for her movies; and
she has managed to turn in a number of highly creditable
performances - though she continues to get mired
down in the occasional cinematic bog. Her recent offerings
have fallen somewhere uncomfortably in the middle: She
sketched a heartfelt and unglamorous characterization
of a harried mother whose young son suffers from a rare
disease in the overweeningly sentimental family drama
The Mighty; played a tough-talking moll who becomes
the unwitting and reluctant savior of a boy threatened
by the mob in the ill-advised Gloria; mugged
her way shamelessly through Albert Brooks' snarky Hollywood
spoof The Muse; and appeared in British theater
director Matthew Warchus' laborious screen adaptation
of the Sam Shepard play Simpatico.
Stone
resolutely maintains a gracious attitude toward her
stardom. She has said she doesn't understand the pained,
petulant way some Hollywood stars consign themselves
to their fate; she herself feels grateful. Her personal
life has also reached a happy and romantic resolution:
After a spate of unlikely boyfriends and a couple of
powerful mogul-type husbands, Stone married newspaper
editor Phil Bronstein on Valentine's Day 1998. The couple
resides in California, and adopted a baby boy, Roan,
in 2000.
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