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I failed at some of the biggest things in life: Sharon Stone

Sharon Stone on being sexy at 50 and her next, 'Fading Gigolo'
Mumbai: Basic Instinct heralded Sharon Stone into the league of extraordinarily sexy women. Twenty-two years since the movie, Stone remains the quintessential blonde bomb for filmmakers. Back with her latest offering Fading Gigolo, Stone doesn’t yawn yet about being a sexy character. She says, “People still want me to take off my clothes but the great thing about ageing is that I don’t have to do it because it gets boring to be just the hot girl all the time. But you know what? Frankly, I think it’s really great.”
The movie deals with a not-so-good looking guy becoming an object of desire for many women. Is that a scenario that Sharon is familiar with? “I never knew I was hot or could be beautiful until I saw Basic Instinct and I was so shocked when I saw how pretty they made me.”
If being typecast was the by-product of her Basic Instinct fame, Sharon also has had to deal with her fair share of failures. Drawing a parallel with Fading Gigolo’s plot that deals with people finding love in the winter of their lives, Sharon says, “I failed at the biggest things there are in life. I failed in my health, I failed in my marriage, I failed in everything and I’ve picked myself up and gone on. I was really lucky not to die.”
Even if being a sexy woman has got her a lot of fans, Sharon is grateful for filmmakers who have pushed the stereotype and given her more challenging roles. Contrary to the notion of women being in denial of their real age, she seems to have embraced hers quite effortlessly. “That’s the great thing about being an older lady. I’m coming in, I’m playing a mom, a career woman, I’m at another phase of life, I can play all kinds of different parts that I might not have been considered for before.”
Before one presumes that Sharon is typically etched out of some special stone, she clarifies that she was just like anyone else — terrified of ageing. “There was a point in my 40s when I went into the bathroom with a bottle of wine, locked the door, and said, ‘I’m not coming out until I can totally accept the way that I look right now’. I examined my face in the magnifying mirror, and I looked at my body and cried. Eventually I moved on realising I’m very happy about being a grown woman. There’s a lot of sexuality, and glamour, and allure, and mystery to being a woman that you just don’t have when you’re young.”
Getting older and accepting one’s imperfections can be trying, worse of all when people want to help you with something you’re happier dealing with on your own. For someone as glamorous as Sharon, there was a lot of unsolicited advice as well. She says, “I can’t tell you how many doctors try to sell me a facelift. I’ve even gone as far as having someone talk me into it, but when I went over and looked at pictures of myself, I thought, What are they going to lift? Yes, I have come close — but, frankly, I think that in the art of ageing well there’s this sexuality to having those imperfections.”
The actress, with a massive male following, has had her fair share of romances but believes that even with the passage of time, there needs to be an old world charm to pursuing a woman. “Men expect that they’ll give you their phone number and you’re going to pursue them. I think that what has happened in the modern dating world is that men expect to be pursued,” she says, laughing, and then laughing some more, she says, “Who wants that kind of man? I want a man who still has his man card.”
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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