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Would you believe us if we told you there was a time when Sharon Stone wasn’t considered sexy? In a new interview on David Begnaud’s “The Person Who Believed in Me” podcast, Stone revealed that early in her career, she was losing parts because casting directors didn’t think she was sexy enough. Her fix was simple, and it changed the course of her career: she appeared on the cover of Playboy.
On the June 1 episode of the podcast, Stone talks about being a sex symbol, something she said she wasn’t considered before Basic Instinct.
“Here’s the thing: Prior to that movie, I would never get the part. I would ask my manager, ‘Chuck, why did I not get it?'” she said, to which her manager would reply: “They don’t think you’re sexy.”
Determined to get the Basic Instinct role, which Begnaud said she was the 13th choice for, Stone made a call.
“I called my friend, Marilyn Grabowski, who was the photo editor at Playboy. I’m like, ‘Marilyn, no one thinks I’m sexy, I don’t know what to do,'” Stone said. “She’s like, ‘come with me to [watch] a Playboy shoot…I want you to see what really happens.'”
Stone tagged along with Grabowski to a shoot, and what she saw redefined how she thought about what’s sexy.
“There was a naked woman leaning over a couch, she had duct tape—silver duct tape—under her bum cheeks and under her boobs and up over her shoulder,” she said, recounting her shock at the taped up lady. (This reporter can confirm that our recent Playmate shoots were totally duct tape free.) Grabowski told Stone that the editors air brushed the duct tape out of the photos, a nip and tuck the readers would never see.
Grabowski proposed that Stone do a Playboy shoot to vixen up her image (“I’m not showing my bum!” Stone replied). After some cajoling, and even more negotiation (Stone would only do it if she got the cover—a real star), Stone appeared on the cover of Playboy’s July 1990 issue with a big spread and profile inside the magazine.
“I did it so I could get Basic Instinct,” she said. “I thought, ‘I have to tell them in some way that they will understand that I am sexy.'”
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