The Louis Theroux Podcast - S2 EP8: Sharon Stone discusses facing off with Robert Mugabe, lifting weights with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and her calamitous dating app experiences.

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Louis spends an evening getting to know Sharon Stone – 90s movie icon and star of Basic Instinct, Total Recall and Casino. Dialling in from her home in Los Angeles, Sharon shares stories from her remarkable life and career, including a face-off with Robert Mugabe, lifting weights with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and her calamitous dating app experiences. Warnings: Strong language, adult subject matter, including descriptions of sexual violence, and is intended for adult consumption only. Listener discretion is advised. Visit spotify.com/resources for information and resources. Links/Attachments:    ‘The Beauty of Living Twice’ – Memoir  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beauty-Living-Twice-Sharon-Stone/dp/1838953868 Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adlo9hJpemE Above the Law (1988) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsbYE-Q474I King Solomon’s Mines (1985)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI4xsKHBx8c Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62PgnOM3UiI Total Recall (1990) (directed by Paul Verhoven)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=684nkWhd658 Basic Instinct (1992) (directed by Paul Verhoven) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh6JwQ8XPK0 Basic Instinct Interrogation Scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8zk5ILRXvw Sliver (1993) (directed by Phillip Noyce)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2pcpvDFhoc Stardust Memories (1980) (directed by Woody Allen)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfqjbSwohWs RoboCop (1987) (directed by Paul Verhoven) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tC_5mp3udE Starship Troopers (1998) (directed by Paul Verhoven) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPYuV_jGk7M Hollow Man (2000) (directed by Paul Verhoven) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PksGHTBW1uE Casino (1995) (directed by Martin Scorsese)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-D0QiMpGKc Broken Flowers (2005) (directed by Jim Jarmusch) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_TB7MkrGyc Lovelace (2013)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPJY-g-WoQo The Muse (1999) (directed by Albert Brooks) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly7FkGb3b-c What About Love (2023)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZze_4HI9L4 Basic Instinct 2 (2006) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsK82mWFLZM Credits:  Producer: Millie Chu   Assistant Producer: Maan Al-Yasiri   Production Manager: Francesca Bassett   Music: Miguel D’Oliveira   Executive Producer: Arron Fellows       A Mindhouse Production for Spotify   www.mindhouse.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, now we're doing this. You ready? Hello! Louis Theroux here. Welcome back to my Spotify podcast called, drumroll please, The Louis Theroux Podcast. In this episode, I'm speaking to Sharon Stone, American actor, painter, and icon of 90s Hollywood. She made her film debut as an extra in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories in 1980, but had her breakthrough role in Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi action film Total Recall in 1990.

She then rose to even further international recognition when she played Catherine Tramiel in another Verhoeven film, Basic Instinct, in 1992, which I watched when I was living in San Jose working on a local newspaper, and I have a distinct memory of going on a date and seeing it and enjoying its comically over-the-top kind of lurid true crime blood on the walls sort of uh i don't know that was the mood i got from it and you know we're going to talk about this in the chat but um there's a moment in it where during a police interrogation the katherine trammell character played by sharon stone uncrosses her legs giving a very brief glimpse at her private parts, if I can put it that way. She's not wearing any underpants, knickers, choose your word. But I remember seeing it and thinking like, I didn't see, I didn't come out of it thinking like, oh my God,

did you see that bit? It sort of flashed by, if I can make a small pun, but nevertheless, flashed by, if I can make a small pun, but nevertheless, that became a weirdly over-the-top sensation. And along with that, Sharon's stock shot up stratospherically. She was huge. She was on all the magazine covers. Everyone was talking about her, saying how amazing she was. And then got a role in Martin Scorsese's Casino, which is a brilliant film, also starring Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, and got some of her best reviews, as well as a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. And then more films followed in its wake,

not quite replicating the level of success of Basic Instinct, but nevertheless, she was there at the very top of of the hollywood game and um i'm at risk of going on too much but let me just briefly flag as well that in 2001 she suffered a brain hemorrhage along with another you know there were a number of other um very serious health issues that she grappled with. And she writes about that among other things in her book. And that's where we join the conversation is with me sort of reflecting on that and sort of well inquiring after her health. We recorded it remotely. I was in the Spotify headquarters in London. She was joining me from Los Angeles. I was very

pleased when I heard that Sharon was keen to have a chat. Sharon didn't have anything she was particularly kind of keen to promote, like this wasn't one of those sorts of interviews, which I think in some ways makes it all the more interesting. And I think she was just up for an in-depth kind of soul-bearing conversation that could go anywhere. The conversation turned out to be unpredictable, lively, unfiltered, almost painfully honest at times. Shockingly so. But there you have it. See what you make of it.

Warnings. Strong language, adult themes and subjects like rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse. All of that and much, much more coming up. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. Can you hear me? Yeah, can you hear me? Loud and clear. How are you?

Good, how are you? I'm very well. Where do I find you? Where are you speaking to me from? I am speaking to you from Beverly Hills, California. And you? London, England. See? Just like a man expecting me to know without telling. Okay, so you weren't believed. I get it. Happy to oblige with any male stereotypes you feel are are applicable i'll do the same on the female okay there we go we'll have the yin and the yang how are you feeling everything all right i've read your book i've watched many of your films i'm a fan i'm but having read your book i i'm also aware

that there's a lot of um vulnerability and that you've been through extraordinary things in your life. And along the way, there's been awful things that you've experienced and come out the other side of, which is why I'm saying, how are you doing? Because I know that you've been through a lot and that your health has been an issue in many ways. So how are you feeling? How is your health? My health is good. And how about you? How are you doing? I am doing good. I'm doing better than I have any right to expect. I know nothing about your health. How have you been? Are you a healthy person? I love that this is about me. Listeners will be disappointed, but I'm going to go with it. I'm fine. I had a full MOT on my body just before Christmas. And given how much I drink, which is more than you're supposed

to, and how just, you know, I'm not particularly clean living, but I'm apparently very fit and healthy, extremely well. So who'd have thought? Do you drink an exorbitant amount or a medium amount? Probably, I know you don't drink or according to your book, you said you didn't drink. So I'm going to assume you're telling the truth. I know you smoke a lot of ganja, which is another word for weed. I'm trying to make it about you again. So probably by your assessment, I would drink an exorbitant amount. What about you? What are your vices? Go on. Why do you think that you do that? Oh, come on, Sharon. You're not seriously... Are you interviewing me? Whose podcast is this?

Why do I do that? Because I like it. Why do you think you do that, Louis Thoreau? I do it because I find it relaxing and I have a relatively high level of anxiety. And at the end of the day, I find that it does a lot to calm me down and kind of tranquilize me, I guess. What's your IQ, Louis? I don't know. I've never had it tested. Yours, I think, is 154. Well, that's one of the tests. But I find that people who have high IQs, and I suspect that you do, have a lot of social anxiety. I do. And I find it hard to be in social situations that don't seem to have a purpose and where everybody's talking all over the place and not really about anything.

talking all over the place and not really about anything. And as I get older, I've found that just not doing it has taken the need to tranquilize myself away. Not doing what? Not going out to kind of parties and not indulging in chit-chat? Not going to those things, yeah. Because I think that people who have a lot to think about find those places just to have too much, create too much social anxiety. And then we want to tranquilize ourselves because it's just all too much. And it's too much for no outcome. You know, you do have to generally juice up in order to actually like it. And then the next day you kind of can't really remember why you liked it so much and you don't really see what you gained out of it because the people that you liked don't become your real friends and they don't it doesn't end up continuing into a relationship of

any value so what are the relationships that you find fulfilling are you how are you getting your emotional sustenance? Well, when I was younger, I used to do all of that. Now, that is a question for me. You know, I have three sons. They're 17, 18, and 23. And, of course, that's pretty wonderful and fulfilling. I do think a lot about how I would like to have a partner and how am I going to do that unless they crawl out of the woodwork. But am I really going to meet someone at one of these

Hollywood parties? I don't see that as the place or even why I would want to meet someone at a Hollywood party. Because I've read your book, right, it's a bit like peeking into someone's journal. So it feels almost slightly rude, I don't know, to cherry-pick particularly revealing or intimate passages, but nevertheless, here we are. So of your love life, you said, I've had an unsuccessful love life for my entire life. Well, I think maybe when I wrote the book, I was feeling a little sorry for myself, but I can't say I think that that's true anymore. I've had wonderful relationships. I've had some that were really good. I think that I thought, maybe I thought when I wrote the book that having relationships that lasted three years or five years wasn't a success. But maybe now in retrospect, I think that those were valuable, beautiful things and that beautiful, good things don't always have to last forever.

always have to last forever. Something that when I made a program about polyamory, they would always say, you know, relationships shouldn't be judged by how long they are, but how happy they are. And I think there's something in that, you know, I agree with that. And, and, and, you know, the health of the relationship is different from when people suffer silently, don't they? And abusive relationships for decades, it's not uncommon, Right. I think you're lucky if you have good friends and people that love you and you have wonderful love affairs and happy life. You don't have to have a life that just appears to look a certain way. Are you okay talking about relationships a tiny bit since we're on the subject? I can talk about anything. I watched the Yogi Berra documentary last night.

We could talk about baseball. That would be difficult for me. Not that I know nothing about it, but very little. It was reported that you were on the dating app Bumble, but that actually people didn't believe it was you and you were kicked off for impersonating yourself? Yeah, at first Bumble kicked me off because they thought it wasn't me. Of course, it didn't really work being me on a dating site, but it really worked on another level of human

experimentation. And because it was during COVID, I ended up having all kinds of different experiments. I went out with all kinds of people and I talked to people on FaceTime and there were a couple of people I just talked to over a long period of time. It was so fascinating. Bumble, for those who don't know, is the dating app that's supposed to be more female friendly. I'm not sure why though. Is it because the women always can choose? I don't think it was more really women friendly. I'm not sure why though. Is it because the women always can choose? I don't think it was more really women friendly. I thought it was really sort of absurd because I don't think that's how people find each other. I think you find each other in the most obtuse way. You run into someone and the next thing you know, a couple of years have gone by, you know, and in the meantime, people encourage you to make all those lists and do all that crazy thing. So you

don't feel that abject horror that, oh, you're not ever going to meet anybody or your life isn't going the way you want it to, or you're not the loneliest person on the planet, or you're not, you're not the loneliest person on the planet or you're not, you know, just completely uncoupleable. Did you join it just as a sort of whim or did you actually, did you have the goal of connecting with someone? Well, I wouldn't have been disappointed to connect with someone, but I didn't really think that it was going to work for me particularly. I went on all kinds of dates, but it was a calamity, an endless calamity. Would you care to unpack that? That's a strong word, calamity.

Oh, I mean, because of course there were people who tried on me and people who tried to create all kinds of weird situations and criminals and drug addicts and you know two gay screenwriters who wanted to pitch their scripts all different kinds of things happened. Just, it's absolutely interesting to be able to do that. And to do it as a famous person was really interesting. Zooming out for a second. And by the way, anything you want to talk about, we could talk about too. I have a new painting show happening. Well, there we go.

I have my, the one show I have now in Greenwich, Connecticut is over on the 15th at the C. Parker Gallery. And I have a new show coming in Berlin. Congratulations. I have the sense for you that from digging into your work, that acting is obviously something you're brilliant at, but not something you particularly choose to let define you, that your relationship with the art and craft of acting, it's not one of a sort of priest-like dedication that you feel like it's been good to you in many ways like it's made you a lot of money over the years you've done some extraordinary performances but you've also allowed yourself to do work you know in movies that you acknowledge were not very good right and I just wonder if you if that's something you care to reflect on I would have liked acting to

be a more definitive space for me to work in, but I don't think that I ever really had an opportunity to have, you know, this plethora of magnificent parts. I don't think I was ever the darling of the acting world or ever considered as one of the acting greats, I was given a lot of weird parts and I never was really considered for all of the great parts. And it's hard to build a career on a bunch of weird parts. that getting to work with the brilliant minds that I've gotten to work with in my humanitarian work and my philanthropic work, you know, it just pulled my mind in a different direction. You know, it's one thing when you're working with a Marty Scorsese or Paul Verhoeven, some of these brilliant, brilliant people that I've had the luxury of working with. But I can't spend my time on a set with a guy who doesn't know you can cut from a two-shot to a close-up. It's just too boring for me. It's just too, it just like, I feel like I'm,

you know, my tire is stuck in the mud. I just can't take it anymore. And so I need to do things that challenge my mind. I can't sit around on these sets where they're trying to use me to finance a film for somebody that's never directed because my brain is growing moss while we're sitting there. So I need to move forward and work with people who have plans with purpose, plans with meaning. I can't just choose acting because I really want to be an actor, which I do, but I can't want to be an actor and then just stand around holding a sword in the corner, you know? just stand around holding a sword in the corner, you know.

I get it. Yeah, totally. And there's a narrative around, you know, like many people in the public eye, there's a narrative around you about how you came to fame and how you achieved this sort of iconic status, and especially in the 90s, had your run of movies starting with basic instinct because that was obviously 92 at that point you were already how old would that be 34 what could that be right i was 32 when i did basic instinct which to me now seems young but in fact you'd been starting in your first movie was 1980 but as an actress it's like dog years yeah And so you'd done this sort of tenure kind of as a galley slave in movies like Police Academy 4, Above the Law with Steven Seagal. He seems to come up in interviews.

In passing, can we just acknowledge what Steven Seagal said to you when you were working with him? Oh, when he told me not to stand in his chi? Yeah, I love that story. Why were you standing in his chi? Because I was playing his wife. So I was standing next to him and I touched him and I was talking to him about the scene and he's really tall and kind of awkward tall, you know, and I put my hand on his chest and I was saying something to him and he took my hand and pushed me back and said, don't stand in my chi. I mean, do you think it was painful for him? It's hard to know, right? Like, I wonder what he was experiencing. He's a very bad person

and he's insistent on his own superiority. And, you know, he's not here to answer to that, but it has been reported by other people that they found him to be, I think the technical term is Dick Wadd or douchebag. And what's odd as well is that it was 1988, it was his debut film, where you would expect he might show a little humility, right? He'd been hired by Michael Ovitz. Well, he was Michael Ovitz's Aikido instructor, Michael Ovitz being a legendary, very powerful agent at the time. It was a bet. Go on.

It was a bet with Ovitz and a couple of other guys that they could take Seagal and turn him into a star. I can make anyone a movie star kind of thing. Almost like a trading places sort of deal. Yeah. Is that really true? trading places sort of deal. Yeah. Is that really true? I wonder if that's really true. That has the whiff of too good to be true. I think it's probably true because he really was one of the most unlikable and difficult people.

He was granted Russian citizenship on November the 3rd, 2016. I mean, he's got a bromance going with Vladimir Putin. I don't know if any of this is legally, I'm looking at my producer, legally, do I need to say anything to make that usable? I mean, he denies that, or maybe he doesn't. And you also did two book movies back to back in Zimbabwe, which you write about. Yeah, when I was a little kid, yeah. This was in the 80s as well, in a kind of Indiana Jones. I mean, I took an interest in that because I did some teaching in Zimbabwe, and it's a beautiful country, as you well know.

When did you do that? I did that in the 88, so a few years after you were there. Oh, but they were in such a rough period at that time still. I mean, but it was going to get worse. Like the early 90s is when it really started to hit the buffers. Right. It was in such a bad shape because, um, there was just nothing. There was no food. There was no imports, no exports. It was a freeze on everything. It was just awful. freeze on everything. It was just awful. I had been taking up money and helping people who their corrugated metal buildings had been burned down if they didn't vote for who

Mugabe wanted them to. And I was taking up collections to get them new places to live. And Mugabe called me into the presidential palace to tell me to knock it off. Are you serious? You met Mugabe? Oh, yeah. He was really furious with me for helping people survive. He called us in and told us to knock it off or we were going to be in a lot of trouble and going into the palace.

It really was like the Eddie Murphy movie with all of the weird, you know, horns and furs and him and his little throne and yelling at me. And I was young enough that I didn't really give a shit what he thought. It was quite a situation. What year were you living there 84 and 85 and were you based in harare or out in i was in harare and victoria falls wow he probably quite liked the idea of a big budget Hollywood production taking place in Zimbabwe, right? That would have been, I would have thought. Well, what was happening is the people that were making the show were laundering money out of South Africa for South Africans. So they were getting like a quarter on the dollar.

And these shows were being made so that South Africans could get their money out and money was going into a Swiss bank account. When the drought ended and there was so much rain that we couldn't work for a long time, they decided to make two movies, which is why we ended up being there for like a year and a half so that they could really get that money out of there. What I'd love to get to is a sense of how, and I know it's overly familiar to you, but how you went from that 10-year purgatory of these films to having your huge moment, your apotheosis with Basic Instinct.

Well, because when I had worked with Paulul verhoeven in total recall he came for total recall he came over to cast people for total recall and i had already been in 700 action movies and they asked me if i wanted to go in to see him and i didn't really want to do any more action movies. And then they said it was Verhoeven. And I had seen, of course, all of his Dutch movies, which were just phenomenal. And he has a doctorate in theology and a doctorate in physics. And he's a very intriguing man, brilliant. And we really hit it off. I came in and he was like, well, you know, your agency isn't pushing you. They're pushing another girl, but Jesus, you're great. You're nine feet tall and that's fantastic. And, you know, we had this great conversation. We

really hit it off and he wanted to hire me And the agency didn't want him to hire me. They wanted him to hire someone else. And they really pushed someone else. And he said, I really had to fight to hire you. It was crazy. And he hired me. He had a really volcanic personality. And so I went to a hypnotist.

And I had her hypnotize me so that I didn't react when he lost his marbles. And so we were able to really get along. And we got along so great that then this basic instinct script came along and he was directing it. And I never thought they'd give me a chance because it was such a big budget, big star film, and I wasn't a big star. And so they offered it to 12 other women before they offered it to me. But they let me screen test, and everybody had to beat my screen test, and nobody was beating my screen test. Pause there. I want to reflect the fact for the younger listeners that Total Recall, which still totally stands up, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the hero based on a Philip K. Dick novel.

And you are his evil wife pretending to be nice. And then you attack him and he kills you. And then he goes, consider dare to divorce. Yeah, it was great. And Rob Bottin won the Oscar for special effects. And so it was really kind of just this aces team. We had such a great team. You liked Arnie? Is Arnie a good guy? He's a really brilliant man. And, you know, he was with all of his lunkheads. And I got to be friends with all of those gym guys.

And I gained their respect because I really worked out. I gained, I think, about 25, 30 pounds of muscle and was single arm curling 35 pounds and was dead lifting and stuff for this film because I had to get really muscular to fight him and get big. And I had worked out at this, you know, kind of super lung head gym where it was just all these guys that that's all they do. really taught me a lot. He taught me about how to do movies and he's a great athlete, very centered filmmaker, very centered, taught me how to do PR. Yeah, I had a very good experience with Arnold. You were going to say, so then Paul Verhoeven, when the script for Basic Instinct came along, did you say that he wanted you in the role of Catherine Tramiel, or he thought you might be right? Or why were you the 13th on the list, is what I'm asking? Well, he thought I would be right. But

for reasons unknown to me, the people in the business didn't think that I would have the discipline or that I would keep it together and be the right person. You know, there's a lot of baggage to looking how I looked, and I was assigned all of the baggage. And so it just became my job to just basically shut up and be consistent. Don't give anybody a reason to think that I was all the things they'd already decided I was. What do you mean by that? The baggage that goes along with looking the way you looked? Yeah, I just, that's been my job all my career. Why don't people like you? Because that's what they've decided about me. So I've always had to just kind of shut up and be consistent. And so my social anxiety

has come along with just going to things and being quiet and not being too extroverted and just cruising through to prove that all of these preconceived notions about me were correct. preconceived notions about me were correct. Did Michael Douglas have a view? I think it's on record that he thought you might not be right. Is that right? Well, you know, Michael was going to have to be naked, fully naked, and in this very highly sexualized movie. And he was the star. So whatever happened, he was going to take all the heat, a hundred percent of the heat. If the movie didn't work, if the movie didn't work, it was not going to be on me because you know, my name wasn't even on the poster for the movie at all. It was like Michael Douglas in basic instinct. And who's the girl, you know, there was no Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct and Who's the Girl?

You know, there was no Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct because who the fuck was Sharon Stone? So if the movie was there was any problems, it was going to be his to bear and his to bear alone. So he was hoping for a Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer was what he was really wanting. But she didn't want to do it. And so even when we were first shooting the first few days, I still thought they were trying to replace me. That must be a weird feeling, right?

Professionally, to have that trap door. It's a weird feeling to this to have that trap door it's a weird feeling to this day to not be the desired cast to still have they're offering it to other people and if they don't take it they'll get back to you nevertheless you got the role and you talk it in your book there's a couple of sort of moments of it feeling like you've arrived. And I think one of them is you describe sitting next to, I think, Faye Dunaway at Cannes at the end of a screening and the audience reaction is rapturous. premiered there was so much resistance and chaos and strife and pr and problems we couldn't have a regular premiere in a regular theater so they shut down the paramount lot and we had to have the premiere on the lot with police at the studio entrances and exits and i was in this terrible position of being that girl

that we didn't yet know. It was the risk movie of the year and everybody was protesting because we had this homosexual character and people thought that it was going to be a bad thing and thought we were making this villainous homosexual killer and it was going to be bad for the gay community. So then Faye said to me, I'll take you to your screening. So Faye took me to my premiere because I was scared and I didn't want to go alone. And so we had it in a screening room on the lot of Paramount and I was seated right behind Michael and Paul. And when the movie ended, there was silence. Like people didn't applaud. They didn't do anything. There was dead silence for like well over a minute, maybe 90 seconds,

maybe two minutes, like dead silence in the room. And then there was this screaming and cheering, like a kind of enthusiasm you just don't get, like lunatic screaming and cheering. And when nobody said anything, I looked at Faye and she went, don't move. And I went, okay. And she goes, do nothing. And I went, okay. And so we're sitting there and Michael kind of just looked cocked around at me, like, don't move. And we just sat there. We held, we held, we held. And I said to Faye, what do I do now? And she said, now they can all kiss your ass because you're a big star. And I was like, oh my God. And Paul and Michael turned around and they were like cheering. I just couldn't believe it because it was so intense. The tension in the room was so intense.

And then it blew like someone popped a balloon. It was just crazy. Did it feel like a vindication? Did you think, okay, now finally I've made it or was it more complicated than that? It was terrifying. It was terrifying because it was so, I had no idea. It was all so new to me. I'd never been to a big premiere. I didn't even know what was happening. It was just crazy. I mean, I went to total recall in Cannes, but like, you know, that was like a party. This was just crazy. I mean, I went to total recall and can, but like, you know, that was like a party. This was like a serious film, serious business. It was all on the line. I knew that my career was either beginning or ending. There was no middle ground. I had taken

such risks. It was either beginning or over. This was the last hurrah. I was 32. I'd put my entire, literally put my ass on the line and that was it. And then suddenly it was just this chaos. It was just, it was so overwhelming. I was kind of in shock when we went to Cannes and opened the festival. And then when I went on the carpet and people started chanting my name, not Michael's, not the movie, but me. And then Paul shoved me out on the carpet ahead of everybody else. I was just like, oh, that's when it dawned on me. Like, I didn't really get it until Cannes. It's hard to overestimate how big it was.

And not just in terms of box office, but the cultural impact. And as you say, it was squarely on your shoulders. And as much as that was, I'm sure, positive and involved massive stardom and success, I think it was a little more ambiguous than that in some ways, almost as though aspects of the Catherine Tramiel character were projected onto you, that you were loved, but also maybe people feared you. And that must have been complicated. And that was a kind of grudgeful note to some of the publicity. And actually the film itself, I don't think the reviews were

rapturous. I think some people loved it, but others didn't. The reviews were not good. My reviews were like, she was like a cheap Chardonnay and stuff like that. And no one wanted to give me a millimeter of positivity. a millimeter of positivity. People wanted to make fun of me. The movie was a worldwide, it was the Beatles, but yet no one wanted to give me a sliver of anything. It was the strangest. Did it feel like that? Because from where I was sitting, you know, as a sort of young man in his 20s, it seemed as though you had the world at your feet, but that people thought the narrative seemed to be she's beautiful. Maybe she's too beautiful. She's powerful. Maybe she's too powerful. She takes herself quite seriously. That was sort of the narrative and that people felt,

and there's something cold about her that as much as we admire her there's a part of it that we don't endorse like there is a feminine softness that we don't see exactly i don't know that's to be i wasn't behaving like a real girl but did you experience it like that from the inside i was trying to hold my own self-respect and dignity against all of the jokes and attention towards my vagina. Right. We haven't mentioned that. And maybe that was subconscious. The fact that, again, for the younger audience, for a lot of people, the takeaway was that there was this shot in which you could see up your skirt. And very, I mean, very little was revealed. But everyone else in the world seemed to fixate on it. Well, because it was a quarter of a frame.

So it was a compressed frame. It wasn't a whole frame. So people kept trying to see if they could see something. But it was ultimately a quarter of a frame. But because of that, people tried to diminish me as a person for playing this incredibly powerful, manipulative, sociopathic character and for playing it well. But because you saw this quarter of a frame up my skirt, they wanted to diminish me as a human being, me personally, the woman who played the part. And I mean, I lost custody of my child over that. I was going to mention that. It's reported that when you were divorcing

Phil Bronstein, your second husband, that you wanted, I guess, more custodial responsibility for your son, Rowan. And what exactly happened? It seems extraordinary that that would have had some bearing on the decision. How was that phrased? What did the judge say? The judge said that I made sex films. The judge asked my tiny child if he knew that his mother made sex films. Wow. That's amazing. That must have been painful. I was in shock.

I ended up in the Mayo Clinic with an extra heartbeat in the upper and lower chambers of my heart because I just stopped eating. I didn't even know what was happening to me. I was just so confused that I could play a part for three months and lose my child. I could be so good at playing a part in a movie that I could lose custody of my child. You had a follow-up film, Sliver, which didn't do so well. And it felt like, again, there was this feeling of like, oh yes, see, we were vindicated. You know, a million dollars at the box office is not, not doing so well. I think it made like $280 million.

Did it? But when you say doesn't do so well, it's because they expected me to bring home another giant smash hit. And they gave me casting approval and they gave me all these approvals, but that when it came time for me to do it, they told me it was a vanity deal and I couldn't have my approvals. And then they started to try to blame me for their mistakes. And they made terrible mistakes in the way that they hired directors and casts. Was it directed by Philip Noyce? Do I have that right? Well, when he was fully present. Uh-oh. Is he alive? Can we say that?

Can we say that? I think it's not. And it was Robert Evans. He's definitely dead. Robert Evans, I think he used to like a little nose candy. A little. You know, he called me to his office with a box of malted milk balls under his arm. And, you know, he had those very low like 70s 80s couches so I'm essentially

sitting on the floor when I should have been on set and he had the spout of the milk balls box open and the milk balls are falling out of this malted milk ball container rolling all over the floor and he's running around his office in his sunglasses, explaining to me that he slept with Ava Gardner and I should sleep with Billy Baldwin. Because if I slept with Billy Baldwin, Billy Baldwin's performance would get better. And we needed Billy to get better in the movie because that was the problem. And if I could sleep with Billy, then we would have chemistry on screen. And if I would just have sex with him, then that would save the movie. And the real problem in the movie was me because I was so uptight and so not like a real actress

who could just fuck him and get things back on track. And the real problem was that I was such a tight ass. And, you know, I'm just sitting there watching the malted milk balls roll all over the floor, thinking about how he wouldn't listen to the list of actors that I suggested for the part. And why, you know, they expect me to go from Michael Douglas to Billy Baldwin. And, you know, I didn't have to fuck Michael Douglas. Michael could come to work and just know how to like hit those marks and do that line and rehearse and show up. And now all of a sudden I'm in the, I have to fuck people business. What was his agenda with the milk bowls? I think he was just high and didn't

even know he had them. I think he was just high out of his mind and rolling around his office. And I don't even think he knew he had them. Hi, I'm Louis Theroux, and you're listening to the Louis Theroux Podcast. And now back to my conversation with Sharon Stone. I think you had a deal with Miramax at one point, did you? Yes, I had a deal with Miramax for quite some time. And did you have to deal with Harvey Weinstein? And what was your experience there like? I had to deal with Harvey all the time while I worked with Amphar for about a decade while he was there. I mean, I was with them for like 30 years, but he was there for like a decade.

The AIDS Research Charity, which you've done a lot of work for. I had a long time of dealing with Harvey, and I'm really glad that he's in prison and I think he should stay there with the rest of the people who are like him. Harvey's a pig. Harvey is just a pig. And he's just, you're always, he's an octopus and you're just always getting one of his tentacles off you.

And he's always thinks that he's the boss of all things. I would be doing these auctions for Ampar and he'd come out and, you know, put his arm around me and take the microphone and start trying to tell me that I was supposed to take the bid of one of his friends. And, you know, I'd have to unwind him off me and, you know, say like, I call the bids, Harvey, fuck off, get off the stage. And everybody think it was funny that I'd be like, fuck off, Harvey, feel off me, fuck off, Harvey, get off the stage. I call the bids. I call the numbers, Harvey. But, you know, I'd come off the stage and he'd be backstage shoving me around or throwing me across the room or

you know he was very violent and he was an anaconda he was disgusting pig would you have been too powerful for him to attempt to coerce you into molest or coerce you into sex

he would say things to me like you you know, you think you're such a princess, Sharon, as I would unwind him off me. And I'd say, yeah, you know, Harvey, I think I'm the queen of France. Fuck off. But he was certainly comfortable with throwing me across a room. throwing me across a room. He was physically violent to me on more than one occasion, because he was so angry at me because I wouldn't do what he wanted me to do. Do you get, I know you've worked with Woody Allen a few times over the years. Yes, three times. And had a spectacular successful experience every time. No problems, ever. You've got good things to say about Woody and would work with him again.

Yeah, I worked with him when I was really young, worked with him on Stardust Memories, and I was on the set for weeks. I worked with him before he met Sunyi. I worked with him and met her. I've worked with him off and on all my life and never a hint of anything inappropriate ever. I've never seen him be inappropriate. I've never seen him demonstrate a whiff of impropriety towards any woman or any young girl. I've never seen him behave in any way that wasn't completely professional and charming and funny and nice and good you know just while we're in this area i mean actually it doesn't really relate directly but you know with paul verhoeven he seems you know he's a visionary auteur director he also made

robocop and um starship troopers and he had a very distinctive vision that was part art house, part big budget spectacular. And then it felt like he ran out of road in Hollywood after he made Hollow Man, the Invisible Man movie. But do you have any sense of, like, do you think Hollywood is just, is it a case that just doesn't have space for people who are too independent like whoever whose artist whose vision is too distinctive how do you explain why he needed to get out yeah i think hollywood really likes people that are this is going to sound really terrible but i often think that people, Hollywood really praises people that are almost great and loves to make big stars out of the pretty good.

But people who are just kind of benign, they love the benign female, for example. And I didn't really understand this until really recently. I mean, I didn't understand at all when I was going to go to the Oscars and Francis Coppola, I was at another event and Francis put his shoulder, his hand on my shoulder. And he said, I need to talk to you. And I'd won the Golden Globe for casino and I was nominated for an Oscar. And I said, oh, sure, what's going on? And he said, you're not going to win the Oscar. And I looked at him, and I said, I'm not.

And he said, no. And I thought I was going to cry. And he said, I want you to feel like you're going to cry now. I don't want you to cry in the room. And that's why I'm doing this. And it feels so mean right now. He said, but I didn't win for the Godfather and Marty didn't win for Raging Bull and you're not going to win for Casino. And it's because this room can't hear opera. They don't let us win because they don't want us to take over the system. This is not the level of films they want. And your performance will stand the test of time. And when you lose, Marty and I are going to be in the room and you're going to lose with us.

And when you lose, we're going to be holding you when you lose. So be ready, be centered, be elegant. We're going to be with you. And I was so kicked, but he gave me enough time to process it so that when I went, I was ready. And then I took my dad. And then right before they called our category, I turned to my dad and I said, dad, it's not going to be me. It's not going to be me. It's going to be Susan Sarandon. And he said, no, it's you. You're winning. And I said, dad, it's my category. They're going to cut to me when they call her name and we have to smile and pretend we're happy about it. So it's now. And he said, no. And I said, dad, it's now. And he said, no, Sharon, no. And I said, dad, right now,

right now, smile right now, now. And they called the names. And he looked at me and he went, like, oh, I just hate this. And I went, me too, I hate it. And he was squeezing my hand. I thought he was going to break my hand. And it's just like, you know, you have to pretend it's fantastic. And it's not fantastic. And then I didn't get any good parts ever again for the rest of my entire life. And guess what?

Do you see it that way? I mean, I haven't done that. That can't be true. Can it? I mean, really? I'm sure there were some other movies that you did that were good. No. And guess what?

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. Because it's easier to say she's cold or I don't like her or she's difficult or she's must be sick or she's too old or that she's hard to cast or we don't know what to do with her. Then what if she comes in and gives another performance and she gets nominated instead of robert de niro well that doesn't go well that's not what we want to have you're saying post post casino there is no movie of yours that you feel proud of we'll take a look. Well, there was a Jim Jarmusch one, wasn't there?

I haven't seen it, though. Well, yeah, but did anybody notice me? Did anybody notice me in Lovelace? That was a performance you could just, like, you could sharpen your knives on. Did anybody notice that? Nope. Do you see any acknowledgement for any of this stuff? Nope. I'm the invisible actress. The muse looked fun. The Albert Brooks one.

Was great. Does anybody notice it? I hate it. I could, I can, you know, play Hamlet in the nude. I could, I can, you know, play Hamlin in the nude. I hate it. There's just nothing. What do you think you had said earlier that, um, you felt there was baggage to look the way you looked. I just want to revisit that one more time is, is the feeling that because,

because of your extraordinary beauty and presence that, um, it was what? And also that I didn't crumble when everybody wanted me to crumble and be like embarrassed or apologetic because i did a good job playing a complicated part like what am i supposed to feel sorry for because i did my fucking job. Like, fuck off. How's your energy? If you've got time and you've got, if you're okay with it, I'd love just to talk about your upbringing a little bit. I hadn't really known much about this before I began reading it, in particular in your book. You'd grown up in Western Pennsylvania and how your family story was complicated. And your parents had met when they, I think she was 16, he was 17. They were devoted to each other, but that you and your three siblings maybe were left

out in certain ways. And obviously, you know, I don't think you were on the breadline, but you were not part of a particularly well-off family. Like money didn't seem to be abundant right which probably didn't help and overshadowing it all is the fact that and again i'm going to mention this because it's in the book and you can feel free to talk or not talk about it as much as you like is your grandfather your mother's father who who you describe as as being abuser? A pedophile. A pedophile, okay.

Yeah, he was a pedophile. Yeah, and so what happened was I think that my mom, I think the stress of they lived in a five-kids, two-bedroom house on the railroad tracks. I think she was given away when she was nine to be a child servant in another house. My dad was given away when he was four because they were oil drillers and the oil well blew up. So both my parents were child servants.

My mother, I think, suffered from probably a bit of dissociative disorder and perhaps bipolar disorder as a result of the extreme trauma of her childhood. and there's such extreme abuse, sometimes a kid will present another kid to take the abuse, to relieve themselves of the abuse, which is what the therapists think that my mother may have done, which is the part where I really, for much of of my life thought my mother was a criminal. And I didn't see my mother as a mentally disturbed child trying to get to safety. This is much like the Epstein situation where he was paying these 12, 13, 14-year-old girls to bring other girls after they had been traumatized? So either they didn't have to come back. Right.

They could get off the hook by sending other girls. And a lot of these girls feel terrible as adults. They're very traumatized because they were supplying these other girls to Epstein, but they were little, little girls themselves. For much of my life, I just thought afraid of her temper, and I was afraid of her, and it made me really shy and have a tremendous amount of social anxiety. And I am very shy and do have a tremendous amount of social anxiety, which people don't understand because of the way I look. People just think that I'm arrogant and dismissive, look, people just think that I'm arrogant and dismissive, which is something that I play to. It helps me hide. It helps me not be, you know, have people jumping all over me and grabbing me because of course that's what happened to me when I got famous is that everyone wanted to touch me and touching me all over the place was of course my least favorite thing to have happen to me when I got favorite.

And of course, then having people interested in me sexually in the weird ways they became interested in me was again, my least favorite thing that could have happened to me. Um, but of course, demonstrating a malicious sexuality was something I could conjure, uh, because I was pretty mad about it. And you felt at the time, was it your suspicion that your mom might have known that something was going on that your um your grandfather was doing something my mother really shut down my mom gained weight got a lot of fibroid tumors she did all of the things that in a modern society we would see as the responses of no therapy, no care, no help, no healing. As a grown older woman, I now fully see it.

You know, and I got her therapy as we got older, but I didn't, of course, how could I understand this? All of her acting out when I was a teenager, I could not understand why she was the mom on the school trip who, you know, played cards and drank with the other kids. Like I couldn't understand her acting out. You know, I was just humiliated and embarrassed and, you know, I didn't understand what my mom was going through, that my mom never had a childhood. I didn't understand that my older brother and she were more like brother and sister than mother and son. I didn't understand any of it until I got much, much older. And writing the book was so illuminating. And then when I read the book to her, then I went back and rewrote the

part of the book where I really started to understand her more because she started opening up and I just hit record on my phone and recorded everything she said. And all of a sudden I was like, whoa, okay. Even still, I'm understanding things about my family and my life that I never would have understood before. It's been almost 20 years ago now that I was dating a lawyer and he called me and he said, there's a guy in the office and he says, he's your cousin. And I said, fantastic. I don't even have relatives. That's so great. How is he my cousin? Well, you know, his grandmother had an affair with your grandfather. Oh, that seems very reasonable. My grandfather was nuts. Well, okay, but he's black. And I'm like, well, so? Like, you know, my grandfather would have had an affair with a chair. Black seems so nothing. Like, great. I have black

relatives. How exciting. You know, send him over. So he came in and he was the spitting image of my older brother, but black. And I was like, well, it's clear we're related. You look just like our family. You know what I mean? You look just like us. Great. Hi. Nice to know you. And let's hang out and let's get to know each other. And when my mom was going to have her 90th birthday, I said, I want to tell you something. I don't know how you feel about this, but we have a cousin and this is how he came to be. And my mother said, well, I'm sure we have all kinds of relatives because my father was so promiscuous and I would love to meet him. And so he came to my mom's 90th birthday. And my mother, now that she lives in a care home and has, you know, 24-7 medical care,

she's very different. She's very settled out. She's lovely now. Like for the first time in my life i have a mom she invited me to lunch next week i just i can't even believe i have this mother who is trying to come to terms with me and talk to me and is like a normal human being well that's i'm sure i can and abuse is unfortunately very common like an everyday thing oh it's an everyday all the time thing. Yeah. And people don't even know, is this abuse? Was that abuse? What do I think about it?

And sometimes I think, well, what I ended up thinking was that the abuse that my grandfather tried to do or did was maybe not even the most hurtful abuse. Sometimes abuse that happens in relationships you choose to be in is far more hurtful because it's far more insidious and intentional and not from someone who's just sick. You know, once you really look at why something happened and what it was and why someone did something, and then you start putting things in perspective, you can start really looking at who did what and why. And we have to start normalizing, talking about all these things that are all too common. It took me so long to understand my mom, mainly because she wasn't allowed to talk about anything that happened to her.

Because women had even less rights than they're trying to take away now. Can I read a relevant, this is, I don't know if this is triggering, but this is the relevant passage of your book that relates to some of what we're talking about. Our mother later said she didn't know about her father's perverse behavior toward us during our older and elementary years. She said she was bitterly sorry she hated him. He, Clarence, had beaten her mother every day of her mother's life. She loved us so much she now understood why we felt about her in all of the ways that we do and there are so many ways that I feel. Nothing is a big way that I felt just nothing nothing at all but those of us who have left this broken piece that has left us unable to mate as others seem to do there is such comfort in solitude there is comfort in the alone time I guess or it just seems

less dangerous? Well, this is the year that I feel that I have gone beyond that. This is the year I feel that I could possibly meet somebody. I know that I'm old, but I don't believe that until you're dead, it's over. But I feel that I feel a lot now, not feel nothing. I feel that I have compassion and empathy for my mother and even a tinge of tenderness. I actually see the child that she never got to be and I've cared for myself in all of that aloneness that I have taken and I've taken a lot of aloneness and I think that now I actually feel ready not to be alone. Hi, me again, Louis Theroux. Just to remind you, you're listening to the Louis Theroux Podcast. And now, back to my conversation with Sharon Stone.

Notwithstanding what we were saying about your movie career, I think you have a movie coming out. Do you? I don't. I mean, they actually are putting out a movie that's a 15-year-old movie I did with Andy Garcia. That's the one. It's 15 years old?

That wasn't good enough to put out when we completed it. The director was a first-time director, and it didn't come together, and I'm not sure why they're putting it out now. Maybe they've re-edited it 1,500 times. I don't know why they're putting it out now. I've explained to my management I think it's supply and demand, and I don't think I have enough projects. People want projects from me, and we don't think I have enough projects. People want projects from me and we

don't have projects to give them. If Scorsese calls you up tomorrow and says, I'm making a movie and I'd love you to be in it, you would be there, would you? Yes. Yes. What about Basic Instinct 3? Well, I felt that the studio fell down on two. They didn't have a great script. They didn't pull it together. Directed by Michael Caton-Jones. It was almost like a British movie, like it had Stan Collymore, the footballer. British footballer was in it.

And David Morrissey was kind of in the Michael Douglas role. David Morrissey was kind of in the Michael Douglas role. I don't even think you could say he was in the Michael Douglas role because he wasn't in the Michael Douglas role. He was in some other idea. And I don't know what they thought they were doing, but nobody there was making a movie. It gets, I think, something like 6% on Rotten Tomatoes. That would have been generous.

But I watched a bit of it. It looked enjoyably kind of bubblegum, you know, looked kind of winningly. I don't even think that you could give it that. I think it was just a piece of shit, and they deserved what they got. They got what they paid for, and they did what they set out to do and they got exactly what they deserved it was number 16 on the 25 biggest box office bombs of all time that it even made a list is a compliment you've got so much detachment. I love your...

I can't even tell you. Being on that set was... The set was a joke. I never saw anything... I mean, I've been on D movies and I've never seen anything like that in my life. Are we legally okay with that? I think that was legally fine.

We can't... We're going to... We'll have to, other opinions are available. I have to say, I never, I've never seen anything like the zoo that was that set. What was, I mean, okay, we've opened up a whole other topic. I mean, to the point that I called Paramount saying I thought they should send someone to the set to wrangle everybody to like be able to do their jobs because nothing was happening and i couldn't believe that they were throwing money down the shitter i never saw such an abuse of waste of a studio's money in all my life

how are we going to talk we're trying to co-start this on a more positive note there's so much more we could talk about i have three teenage boys well two teenagers how are we going to talk? We're trying to co-start this on a more positive note. There's so much more we could talk about. I have three teenage boys, well, two teenagers and one nine-year-old. So I can relate in some way to whatever you're feeling, not so much as a mother, but as a parent, something we have in common. I just wanted to point that out. And something you said, I think where they don't want to necessarily engage with you but they sort of want you there so they cannot engage with you you know they cannot they can sort of actively ignore you it's like you are stapled to the couch but fuck off yes they need you as a scratching post right something to yes to kind of growl at. And I think that's pretty normal. Anyway, I just throwing that

in to get us out of the heavy stuff. It's very important that you're there. It's very important. I've stopped traveling. And I used to make documentaries that took me on the road and was away for a few months a year. And then in the last few years, since they became, you can sort of get away with it when they're very young and even toddlers and even slightly later. But then it's almost the more they break away, they need you to be there to break away from, it seems to me. Exactly. Exactly. And sometimes I say to my 18-year-old who's just getting ready to go to college next year. You know, he'll,

I'll want to show him something. He's sitting in the room and he just won't even look. He won't look. He refuses to look up. I want to show you this. No, I'm not going to like, can you even look? No, I don't want to see it. I don't even want to see it. And finally I get so frustrated. And then I say to him, Oh, this is where you're disconnecting from me so you can leave. I get it. It hurts my feelings, but this is what you're supposed to be doing. Psychologically, this is a healthy moment and I shouldn't be freaking out. Let me readjust myself so I don't have such hurt feelings.

And then he'll look up from the couch and go, okay. Like I'm talking this all through out loud because I'm trying to figure out. Right, exactly. Whatever, mom. Yeah. Thank you so much, Sharon, for joining me on this chat. I feel like I got a real insight. And for me to talk to someone whose films I've admired, but also who's like, I know you're a legend.

I think it was Camille Paglia who said you're the last great Hollywood star. There was along those lines. I should have had that at my fingertips. So it feels a huge privilege. And just to have a freewheeling and open-hearted conversation, you know, even at such physical distance is a privilege. So thank you. Thank you.

I want to say I like your song. Oh, my God. I got such a kick out of that. And I'm happy to meet you, too. I didn't know where that sentence was going to end. I like your song. I will take. Jiggle, jiggle.

Thanks again. So there we have it. A conversation I never imagined myself having. Certainly not when I saw Basic Instinct back in 1992, the idea that 31 years, 32 years hence, I'd be talking to the screen siren, Sharon Stone, and that she'd be commenting on Jiggle Jiggle, my international global smash and gold record. Stream it on Spotify. There we go. There's some synergy for you. My takeaways from that were the extraordinary self-exposure, the depth of her angst, the pain of not winning the Oscar, the way she was saying, I hate it, I hate it, kind of blistering and well very striking moving and maybe true of more actors and all kinds of people you know who feel in different ways either under fulfilled or in some way ignored or overlooked or underappreciated and the way in which she

reflected on Hollywood generally something, she said that Hollywood rewards something like the nearly talented or the not quite great, which you could write off, like you could unkindly say, well, that sounds like sour grapes. That's a world in which the very highest echelons are people less talented than me. My problem was I was too good to be at the very top rank. But actually there's something in the idea that it's a world that rewards success and thereafter tries to replicate success. Like that's my aperçu of Hollywood. It's like it's looking for some iteration of something it already knows and recognizes. And that if you go there this is going to sound autobiographical and faintly embittered but never mind but if you go there

with your own vision and something that doesn't squarely fit into the boxes that they already know and are familiar with then it can be maybe confusing you know and that phrase she uses hollywood can't hear opera like she i think I think, attributes to Coppola, which speaks for itself. And I do think across the board, here we go, I'm ranting now, but very often, the things that you do that are the most interesting as an artist, yes, I'm calling myself one, are not rewarded. Like the things that are most challenging and difficult and naughty and confusing and complex. Anyway, what does this have to do with Sharon Stone? I'm sure it has something. The other thing I wanted to mention is I felt a bit bad listening back at how much shade was cast at, was thrown in the direction of Basic Instinct 2, which I haven't

seen, but I feel like, you know, if Michael Caton-Jones or David Morrissey or any of the others, Stan Collymore, were listening, let me speak to you directly right now. Whether or not that film was a piece of shit, I don't know. But we all do films and make things that we're not proud of. And, you know, a day's work is a day's work. Oh, this isn't doing anything. And so you are welcome on the podcast anytime to present your version of events. Consider debt an invitation. I noticed Sharon did not react to my Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. I'll pass over that without comment. I'm not offended.

We spoke about the two movies she filmed in Zimbabwe. Those were King Solomon's Mines and Alan Quartermain and The Lost City of Gold, 1985 and 1986, respectively. And I did watch a little bit of one of them and it was so goofy it was hilarious it was very much a kind of low rent knockoff of uh indiana jones with richard chamberlain from dr kildare filling in for harrison ford even down to that the hat regarding the contention that um sharon had lost custody of her son rowan because of basic instinct 2 or had her custody restricted. We did a little digging and what we found was, according to our research, the judge said that Sharon had a tendency to quote overreact to her son's health issues and that she put her

career first and left parenting to quote third parties. but i can't speak to you but sharon obviously feels that there may have been ulterior motives or at least a sense in which the judge might have been influenced by the judge's perception of basic instinct and what it represented so there we have it a bona fide hollywood legend a real life screen siren. That's kind of a sexist term, isn't it? But maybe I'm using it ironically, which would make it okay. You know, I love Hollywood. Can I put it that boldly? I love the mythology around it. One of my favorite films is Sunset Boulevard. I got a very, I hope this doesn't sound disrespectful, but that sense of grandeur that infuses those old movies about Hollywood, I felt kind of coming down the wires to me when I was speaking to Sharon.

So what a privilege, how exciting. I think the other thing that came across was, well, the loneliness, right? And the feeling that Sharon was looking for love and the paradox that stardom and beauty, extreme beauty, might be obstacles. And high intelligence and self-possession. These might all be obstacles to forming fulfilling long-term relationships. That's an intriguing, not to say like a, you know, I guess a saddening concept. You know, if you're out there and you're not a Hollywood star, you're not well off and being feted at film festivals around the world and the subject of fan interest, then maybe you're

better off in your humble, you know, sad little existence in Normieville, right? In nowhere land. Too much? If you've been affected by the topics discussed in this episode, Spotify do have a website for information and resources. Visit spotify.com slash resources. Credits. Produced by Millie Chu. The assistant producer was Maan Al-Yaziri.

The production manager was Francesca Bassett and the executive producer was Aaron Fellows. The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira. This is a Mindhouse production for Spotify.