Online Reporter
Robson Sharuko
Metros Editor
LONG before Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SnapChat, TikTok and Queen Nadia TV, there was Sharon Stone.
When the United States actress stepped into the role of Catherine Tramell, a wealthy heiress and crime novelist suspected of killing rock star Johnny Boz, in the 1992 crime thriller Basic Instinct, Stone was just 34.
Then, in one scene in the movie, everything about her changed and she became one of the biggest sex symbols of the ‘90s.
Having been summoned for questioning by a team of detectives, Stone sat in the centre, dressed in a short, revealing white dress and with a cigarette in hand.
She was not wearing any underwear.
And, then, at the right moment, she played her wild card.
She decided it was time to try and seduce the detectives around her and she crossed her legs, revealing a lot of what was under her dress.
The crossing of her legs doesn’t even last two seconds.
But, it created a scene so famous, or infamous, depending on which side you are on, it is now the most paused scene in movie history.
It caused quite a stir, at the time the movie was released in 1992, but it also propelled Basic Instinct into a box office hit.
That scene also transformed Stone into a global superstar on the movie scene.
“It made me an icon but it didn’t bring me respect,” Stone told Business Insider.
“But would I do it again? We don’t get to make these choices in life. I don’t participate in the fantasy world in this way.
“I very much believe that none of us knew at the time what we were getting in regard to that shot, and when Paul (Verhoeven, the movie director) got it, he didn’t want to lose it, and he was scared to show me. And I get that.
“Once I had time to calm down, I didn’t make him take it out of the movie when I had the legal right to.
“So, I did have the chance to do it differently, and I didn’t because once I had the chance to step back, I understood, as the director, not the girl in the film, that that made the movie better.”
She has even claimed she was duped into removing her underway after being told that it was reflecting some light which were affecting the picture quality.
But, as her fame soared, largely built on the fantasy of that one erotic scene, so did the consequences.
“Movies can have a profound effect on those who act in them, but sometimes, it can have a devastating consequence – like what Sharon Stone experienced after her Basic Instinct famous leg cross scene,” noted the website tyla.com.
“The film propelled Stone into stardom after having previously found fame in Total Recall.
“However, one moment in the film would prove to break her too.”
Her marriage broke down and she lost the custody of her child, Ron, who was then just four years old.
“I lost custody of my child,” Stone told Podcast host Bruce Bozzi. “The judge asked my child, my tiny little boy, ‘Do you know your mother makes sex movies?’”
Her husband Ron Bronstein filed for divorce in 2003. She says all this turmoil in her life, which she blames on that erotic scene, also led her to develop cardiac issues, which were triggered from heartbreak after the breakdown of her marriage.
“People are walking around with no clothes on at all on regular TV now and you saw maybe like a 16th of a second of possible nudity of me – and I lost custody of my child.
“Are you kidding?
“It broke my heart. It literally broke my heart.”
But, she wasn’t the only one who suffered from the consequences of that erotic scene.
“Verhoeven (the director) ended up in the hospital – his sinus thing ruptured, and he couldn’t stop having a nosebleed,” she told The New Yorker.
“There was tremendous pressure on that set.
“Now people walk around showing their p*****s on Netflix but in the olden days, what we were doing was very new.
“This was a feature film for a major studio, and we had nudity, sex, homosexuality, all these things that, in my era, were breaking norms.”
Mathew Masinge