Today, nudity in film and television seems almost commonplace, but for stars in past decades, there have been real-life repercussions for even the tiniest of glimpses.
Actor Sharon Stoneknown for playing some of the most iconic femme fatales of the 1990s, says she lost custody of her daughter over her role in the 1992 film Basic Instinct.
During a podcast appearance on Table for two with Bruce BozziStone, 65, said judicial prejudice in her 2004 divorce case allowed for the film to be “used as a weapon against her.”
While fighting for custody of her now 22-year-old son Roan — whom she adopted with her ex-husband Phil Bronstein in 2000 — Stone said the judge asked her son if he knew he made “sex movies” his mother.
The judge’s question is likely a reference to a beginning of the iconic interrogation scene in Basic Instinct where Stone removed his feet while sitting.
“People are walking around with no clothes on at all on regular TV now and you see maybe, like, a 16th of a second of my possible nakedness – and I lost my child’s custody,” said he said in a podcast released on Tuesday. “Are you kidding?”
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Although she was granted visitation rights to her son, Stone said the loss of custody contributed to the heart issues that landed her in the hospital.
“I ended up at the Mayo Clinic with extra heartbeats in the upper and lower chambers of my heart,” she said. “It broke my heart.”
The biases against Stone for fleeting nudity in Basic Instinct also felt outside the courtroom. When he was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1993, the filmmakers’ room laughed as his name was called.
“It’s horrible. I was so humiliated,” Stone recalled. “Does anyone have any idea how hard it was to play that part? How awkward? How scary? To try and bring this complicated film that breaks all the boundaries and everyone is protesting against, and the pressure. I auditioned for it for nine months. They offered it to 13 other people and now you’re laughing at me. I just want to crawl into a hole.
“Now people are walking around showing their privates on Netflix, but, back in the day, what we were doing was very innovative. It was a feature film for a major studio, and we had nudity, sex, homosexuality, all these things that, in my time, violated the norms.”
This isn’t the first time Stone has talked about the emotional toll of working Basic Instinct.
In his 2021 memoir The Beauty of Living Twice, Stone said he was unaware of the nude scene until watching the film with agents and lawyers. She wrote that director Paul Verhoeven tricked her into filming the scene when he insisted her white underwear reflect light on camera.
Verhoeven maintains a different account of the shooting of the scene. In 2021, he told Variety that his “memory is radically different from Sharon’s memory.”
“That doesn’t detract from and has nothing to do with the wonderful way he portrayed Catherine Tramell,” he said. “He’s really phenomenal. We still have a happy relationship and exchange text messages.”
Stone has three adopted children. She later adopted Roan’s two siblings, Quinn and Kelly. Last year, Stone revealed that he had nine miscarriages in his life.
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