Sharon Stone

Sharon Vonne Stone (born March 10, 1958) is an American actress and painter.

Sharon Vonne Stone was born on March 10, 1958, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, to Dorothy Marie (née Lawson), an accountant, and Joseph William Stone II, a tool and die manufacturer and former factory worker.

She has three siblings: Michael, Kelly, and Patrick Joseph (died in 2023).

She has some Irish ancestry.

She graduated from Saegertown High School in Saegertown, Pennsylvania, in 1975.

Stone was admitted to Edinboro University of Pennsylvania on a creative writing scholarship at age 15, but quit college and moved to New York City to become a fashion model.

While attending Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Stone won the title of Miss Crawford County, Pennsylvania, and in 1976, was a candidate for Miss Pennsylvania.

One of the pageant judges told her to quit college and move to New York City to become a fashion model.

Stone left Meadville and moved in with an aunt in New Jersey, and by 1977, she had been signed by Ford Modeling Agency in New York City.

She soon moved to Europe, living for a year in Milan and then in Paris.

While living there, she decided to quit modeling and pursue acting.

"So I packed my bags, moved back to New York, and stood in line to be an extra in a Woody Allen movie," she later recalled.

After modeling in television commercials and print advertisements, Stone made her film debut as an extra in Woody Allen's dramedy Stardust Memories (1980) and played her first speaking part in Wes Craven's horror film Deadly Blessing (1981).

In the 1980s, she appeared in such pictures as Irreconcilable Differences (1984), King Solomon's Mines (1985), Cold Steel (1987), and Above the Law (1988).

At 20, Stone was cast for a brief role in Allen's dramedy Stardust Memories (1980) and had a speaking part a year later in the horror film Deadly Blessing (1981).

Through the remainder of the 1980s, she appeared as a reporter in the comedy Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987), an attractive but mysterious woman with a hidden agenda in the thriller Cold Steel (1987), the wife of an ex-CIA agent in the crime film Above the Law (1988) and the ill-fated wife of a successful businessman in the action film Action Jackson (1988).

French director Claude Lelouch cast Stone in the musical epic Les Uns et les Autres (1982), starring James Caan, but she was on screen for two minutes and did not appear in the credits.

She secured guest-spots on the television series Silver Spoons (1982), Bay City Blues (1983), Remington Steele (1983), Magnum, P.I. (1984), and T. J. Hooker (1985); played a starlet who breaks up the marriage of a successful director and his screenwriter wife in the drama Irreconcilable Differences (1984), opposite Ryan O'Neal, Shelley Long and a young Drew Barrymore; and starred as a resourceful woman teaming up with a fortune hunter (played by Richard Chamberlain) in the action-centered King Solomon's Mines (1985) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986), a light, comedic take on the Indiana Jones film series, which were poorly received by critics and audiences.

In his review for King Solomon's Mines, Walter Goodman of The New York Times considered that Stone was "up to date as a spunky, sexy, smart-talking heroine with an effective right hook" but felt that the story was "lost in the effects".

For her performance in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, she received her first Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actress.

On television, Stone has had leading and supporting roles in productions such as the ABC miniseries War and Remembrance (1987), the HBO television film If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000), Steven Soderbergh's Mosaic (2017) and Ryan Murphy's Ratched (2020).

Stone obtained the role of Janice Henry in the ABC miniseries War and Remembrance (1987), the sequel to the 1983 miniseries The Winds of War, based on the 1978 novel of the same name written by Herman Wouk.

Known for primarily playing femmes fatale and mysterious women in film and television, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1990s.

She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a nomination for an Academy Award.

She had a breakthrough with her part in Paul Verhoeven's science fiction action film Total Recall (1990), before rising to international recognition when she portrayed Catherine Tramell in another Verhoeven film, the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992), for which she earned her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.

In Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990), a science fiction action film opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stone played the seemingly loving wife of a construction worker.

The film received favorable reviews and made $261.2 million worldwide, giving Stone's career a major boost, leading to her being cast in five feature films released throughout 1991.

She played what Roger Ebert described as the "bad girl" in the romantic comedy He Said, She Said, a sexually repressed woman in the psychological thriller Scissors, a wealthy blonde in the crime drama Diary of a Hitman, a provocative young photojournalist in the thriller Year of the Gun and the agent and former lover of a writer in the neo-noir Where Sleeping Dogs Lie.

In another Verhoeven film, the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992), she took on the role that made her a star, playing Catherine Tramell, a brilliant bisexual and alleged serial killer.

Several actresses at the time turned down the role, mostly because of the nudity required.

Her other notable films include Sliver (1993), The Specialist (1994), The Quick and the Dead (1995), Sphere (1998), The Mighty (1998), The Muse (1999), Catwoman (2004), Broken Flowers (2005), Alpha Dog (2006), Bobby (2006), Lovelace (2013), Fading Gigolo (2013), The Disaster Artist (2017), and The Laundromat (2019).

She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1995 and was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2005 (Commander in 2021).

Stone's performance as a trophy wife in Martin Scorsese's epic crime drama Casino (1995) earned her the best reviews of her career, which garnered her a Golden Globe Award along with an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

She made guest appearances in The Practice (2004) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2010), winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for the former.

In a 2013 interview with Conan O'Brien, she stated that her Irish ancestors arrived in the United States during the Great Famine.

She has a reported IQ of 154.

Stone was considered academically gifted as a child and entered the second grade when she was five years old.

Stone said that she and her sister were both sexually abused as children by their maternal grandfather, in an interview to The New York Times in March 2021, while promoting her memoir The Beauty of Living Twice.

At 14, her neck was badly injured while breaking a horse when the animal bucked as it charged toward a washing line.

Inspired by Hillary Clinton, Stone later went back to Edinboro University to complete her degree in 2016.