In the 1992 thriller “Basic Instinct,” actress Sharon Stone famously uncrossed her legs during a police interrogation, exposing her nether regions on camera. According to Stone, however, she was misled into doing the scene and fought to block the film’s XXX re-release.
Speaking on the Australian show “A Current Affair,” the model-turned-actress said new Screen Actors Guild (SAG) rules that would have given her a fighting chance to block the 30th anniversary XXX cut if they were implemented earlier.
“They’ve decided to release the director’s XXX cut for the 30th anniversary,” Stone said, as reported by Yahoo News. “There are new [Screen Actors Guild] rules about that that have been made and created but they were made after I, as a young lady, made this film, so they don’t apply to me.”
“Regrets are like farts, you can’t get them back,” she jokingly added. “Once they’re out, they’re stinky and gone.”
Stone previously alleged in her memoir, “The Beauty of Living Twice,” a production member told her to remove her underwear in the scene for lighting purposes, assuring her that no private parts would be exposed. Stone only learned that her vagina was in the final cut of the film when she watched in a room “full of agents and lawyers, most of whom had nothing to do with the project.”
“That was how I saw my vagina-shot for the first time, long after I’d been told, ‘We can’t see anything — I just need you to remove your panties, as the white is reflecting the light, so we know you have panties on,’” she wrote in the memoir, according to Vanity Fair. “Yes, there have been many points of view on this topic, but since I’m the one with the vagina in question, let me say: The other points of view are bulls**t.”
“Now, here is the issue,” Stone continued. “It didn’t matter anymore. It was me and my parts up there. I had decisions to make. I went to the projection booth, slapped [director] Paul [Verhoeven] across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer, Marty Singer.”
After battling it out with director Paul Verhoeven, Stone ultimately let the film release the scene as it was cut together.
“After the screening, I let Paul know of the options Marty had laid out for me,” she wrote. “Of course, he vehemently denied that I had any choices at all. I was just an actress, just a woman; what choices could I have? But I did have choices. So I thought and thought and I chose to allow this scene in the film. Why? Because it was correct for the film and for the character; and because, after all, I did it.”
“What if I were the director? What if I had gotten that shot?” she further reflected. “What if I had gotten it on purpose? Or by accident? What if it just existed? That was a lot to think about. I knew what film I was doing. For heaven’s sake, I fought for that part, and all that time, only this director had stood up for me.”
Director Paul Verhoeven denies exploiting Sharon Stone in any way.