Sharon Stone Says She Was Pushed To Have Sex With Co-Star To Create On-Screen Chemistry

Sharon Stone has revealed that a producer once pressured her to have sex with her co-star in order to fix their on-screen chemistry problem. The legendary actress, who will be releasing her memoir The Beauty of Living Twice later this month, wrote about the experience in the film industry, explaining that while most of the fellow actors and film execs she worked with over the years were respectful and pleasant to work with, there was one in particular who completely crossed her boundaries.

  1. Stone is legendary for her on-screen sex scenes. As the actress explained, taking part in sex scenes as an actress is “expected in [her] business” and expressed disappointment that so many women in the industry were viewed simply as “ornaments” and that “[she] was supposed to do what [she] was told.”
  2. The lack of on-screen chemistry wasn’t always down to her. As Stone recalled, sometimes studios hired terrible actors that ended up affecting her ability to do her job well. However, she was encouraged to fix the problem by having sex with the male actor. “They cast who they wanted. To my dismay, sometimes. To the detriment of the picture, sometimes. I had a producer bring me to his office, where he had malted milk balls in a little milk-carton-type container under his arm with the spout open,” the 63-year-old wrote as per an excerpt published by Vanity Fair. “He walked back and forth in his office with the balls falling out of the spout and rolling all over the wood floor as he explained to me why I should f**k my co-star so that we could have onscreen chemistry.”
  3. Having sex wasn’t going to solve the problem. Not only was the suggestion completely inappropriate and disrespectful, this is Sharon Stone we’re talking about here and she wasn’t about to mince words. “I watched the chocolate balls rolling around, thinking, You guys insisted on this actor when he couldn’t get one whole scene out in the test… Now you think if I f**k him, he will become a fine actor? Nobody’s that good in bed,” she continued. You tell ’em, Sharon!
  4. Her job was to act, that’s it. Sharon Stone is a fantastic actress and that’s all she’s hired to do: act. As she continued in her book, it wasn’t her job to try to make someone else a good actor or bring something to life in them. “I felt they could have just hired a co-star with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines. I also felt they could f**k him themselves and leave me out of it. It was my job to act and I said so,” she recalled. And no, she never went through with it.
  5. It’s hard to imagine that much has changed in the industry. While it would be unfair to say that every experience for female actors is like this, we know from the #MeToo movement that it’s still all too common. Hopefully the more we talk about it and call this kind of behavior out, the more likely we are to see a change.
Jennifer Still is a writer and editor with more than 10 years of experience. The managing editor of Bolde, she has bylines in Vanity Fair, Business Insider, The New York Times, Glamour, Bon Appetit, and many more. You can follow her on Twitter @jenniferlstill
close-link
close-link
close-link
close-link