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SHARON STONE BIOGRAPHY |
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Born on March 10th, 1958 in Meadville,
Pennsylvania, Sharon Stone was still in school when she started
acting. After college Sharon began a modeling career and was
signed to represent Clairol, Diet Coke, and Revlon. Her modeling
allowed her acting career to blossom, and she has appeared in
such films as Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Sliver, Casino,
Sphere, and The Muse.
This former beauty pageant contestant and Ford model made her
film debut with a non-speaking part as a beautiful woman
fleetingly glimpsed from a moving train in Woody Allen's
Stardust Memories (1980), and thereafter clawed her way to a
stardom that has brought back an old-fashioned, high-octane
glamour to the role of ''movie star.'' Sharon, who grew up a
bookworm in a large family in Northwest Pennsylvania, worked her
way up from McDonald's counter-girl to successful Ford model (both
in print ads and TV commercials) by the late 1970s.
Through the 1980s, Sharon appeared as a stereotypical blonde in
mostly forgettable roles: in Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing
(1981); as a down-and-out waitress turned petulant movie star in
Irreconcilable Differences (1984); an archaeologist's daughter
in King Solomon's Mines (1985) and its sequel, Allan Quatermain
and the Lost City of Gold (1987). Other unmemorable early
credits include Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987),
Action Jackson (1988) and the umpteenth remake of Blood and Sand
(1989).
Sharon also struggled in TV, beginning with a tiny part in ''Not
Just Another Affair'' (CBS, 1982), the short-lived series Bay
City Blues (NBC, 1983) and gradually bigger (though not better)
roles in the TV movies ''Calendar Girl Murders'' (ABC, 1984), ''The
Vegas Strip War'' (NBC, 1984), the failed cop-show pilot ''Hollywood
Starr'' (ABC, 1985), ''Mr. and Mrs. Ryan'' (ABC, 1986), ''Badlands
2005'' (ABC, 1988) and ''Tears in the Rain'' (Showtime, 1988).
Probably her only TV success was a supporting role as Robert
Mitchum's daughter-in-law in the epic miniseries War and
Remembrance (ABC, 1988-89).
Sharon's first real break was playing Arnold Schwarzenegger's
kick-boxing, secret agent ''wife'' in Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi
actioner Total Recall (1990). After five more forgettable
thrillers and comedies, she finally achieved the proverbial
''overnight'' stardom as a sexually voracious crime writer
opposite Michael Douglas in Verhoeven's controversial and
popular erotic thriller, Basic Instinct (1992). Her pantieless
leg-crossing scene brought Sharon much-needed notoriety, but has
haunted her ever since.
In a more conventionally sympathetic role, Sharon followed up
with another sizzling sex melodrama, Sliver (1993), which did
middling business stateside but proved a solid success overseas.
Trying to escape the sex-bomb trap, she begged for the frigid
wife role in Intersection (1994), which met with limited
success. She again flexed her international box-office clout
paired with Sylvester Stallone in the explosive actioner The
Specialist (1994) but fared much less well commercially with her
next project, The Quick and the Dead (1995), which marked her
producing debut. Sharon looked terrific in Western duds playing
something of a distaff version of a Clint Eastwood-like
gunfighter. Her directorial choice, Sam Raimi, helmed the
smartly derivative tale with style to spare but the critical
reception was uneven and the public stayed away. She rebounded
with her widely acclaimed performance as Ginger, the Vegas
hustler who wins the heart of Robert De Niro, in Martin
Scorsese's Casino (also 1995), a film that earned her a long
sought-after Academy Award nomination.
The highly-paid, much-in-demand star (she has her own production
company, Chaos, and has signed a first-look deal with Miramax)
next filmed a remake of the Henri-Georges Clouzot's noir classic
Diabolique with Isabelle Adjani and Chazz Palmentieri and played
a death-row inmate whose lawyer (Rob Morrow) works to save her
from execution in Last Dance (both 1996).
Sharon, a diva who thoroughly enjoys her hard-won stardom, is a
clever manipulator of her public image—on heavy press days, she
reportedly changes outfits between each interview and photo
session, a practice unheard of since the days of Joan Crawford
and Norma Shearer. She lives, fittingly enough, in a gated
French chateau in Beverly Hills. |
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