Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas: A Tumultuous Beginning
From the outset, things were turbulent between Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas.
The two found themselves in a heated public discussion prior to the release of “Basic Instinct” in 1992, as Stone discussed in a recent interview with Business Insider.
Stone alleged that Douglas was hesitant to work with her due to some initial tension they had experienced at Cannes. She suggested that Douglas was reacting defensively while discussing someone he had criticized before, and it escalated from there.
“We were all sitting in a group, and he started talking about someone and their kid,” she recounted. “I actually knew this person, so I chimed in, and he snapped, ‘What does F-K know?’ It was related to father-son dynamics.”
Stone recalled that Douglas yelled at her in front of others.
“I’m not one to just back down and say, ‘Oh, sorry, superstar’,” she stated. “I pushed my chair back and told him, ‘Let’s go outside.’ That’s how we first met.”
When they went outside, Stone explained that the man Douglas was speaking about was a close family friend. Though their initial encounter felt a bit rocky, she noted that they parted on good terms. But it clearly left an impression on Douglas.
“Fast forward to the casting for ‘Basic Instinct,’ and he wasn’t keen on having me as his co-star,” she said.
Despite the shaky start, Stone expressed no regrets about their early interactions, believing that the tension actually benefited her during filming.
“If he yelled at me, I wasn’t going to be shaken,” she explained. “Michael has a certain temperament, and I wasn’t fazed, which was interesting for my character.”
“This dynamic worked really well,” she added. “Ultimately, we’ve become great friends, and I truly admire him.”
However, Douglas’s representative told Page 6 that the actor “can’t remember” meeting Stone at all before the casting process.
According to them, Douglas didn’t recall knowing Stone beforehand. “When he saw her audition for ‘Basic Instinct,’ he thought she was the right actress for the role. He remembers being at Cannes for the film festival, but not specifically interacting with her,” they stated.
On a side note, Stone, now 67, previously mentioned that she was paid $500,000 for her role as Katherine Trammel, while Douglas earned an impressive $14 million for portraying detective Nick Curran.
“I was new to the scene, and he was already a massive star,” she revealed during the 43rd Muse Awards in March 2023.
Stone also spoke about some negative experiences with the film’s line producers. “Even at the Governor’s Ball after the Oscars, he called me ‘Karen!’ That humiliation stuck with me—my name wasn’t even on the poster,” she said, reflecting on how such incidents affected her deeply.
