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Sharon Stone

Sharon Vonne Stone, born March 10, 1958, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, built her career around a screen presence that can shift from inviting to dangerous without much warning. Before acting, she worked as a fashion model, signing with the Ford Modeling Agency and spending time in Milan and Paris. She eventually returned to New York to pursue film work, beginning a career that would span movies, television, voice acting and producing. Her early roles covered plenty of genre territory. In King Solomon’s Mines, Stone played a resourceful heroine opposite Richard Chamberlain, while Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol cast her as a reporter. She also appeared in the late-1980s action films Above the Law and Action Jackson, steadily moving toward the parts that would define the next stage of her career. That shift arrived with Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall. Playing the seemingly loving wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s construction worker, Stone brought a sharp edge to the film’s unstable reality and received a major career boost from its success. She reunited with Verhoeven for Basic Instinct, taking on the role of novelist and suspected killer Catherine Tramell. The performance made her a star and earned her a Golden Globe nomination, establishing how effectively she could combine control, wit and menace. Stone made a cameo in Last Action Hero before delivering one of her most acclaimed performances in Martin Scorsese’s Casino. As Ginger McKenna, the self-absorbed and increasingly volatile wife of Robert De Niro’s gambling handicapper, she found room for glamour, anger and desperation within the same character. The role brought her a Golden Globe win and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her career has continued across mainstream films, independent productions and television. She produced and starred in The Quick and the Dead, later earned an Emmy for a guest role on The Practice, and returned to substantial television work in Mosaic and Ratched. Across those different settings, Stone remains most compelling when a part gives her charm and danger to play at once—the tension running through Total Recall, Basic Instinct and Casino alike.