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Biography
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This
former beauty pageant contestant and Ford model made her film debut
with a non-speaking part as a beautiful woman fleetingly glimpsed
from a moving train in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), and
thereafter clawed her way to a stardom that has brought back an
old-fashioned, high-octane glamour to the role of "movie star."
Stone, who grew up a bookworm in a large family in Northwest Pennsylvania,
worked her way up from McDonald's counter-girl to successful Ford
model (both in print ads and TV commercials) by the late 1970s.
 Through
the 1980s, Stone appeared as a stereotypical blonde in mostly forgettable
roles: in Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing (1981); as a down-and-out
waitress turned petulant movie star in Irreconcilable Differences
(1984); an archaeologist's daughter in King Solomon's Mines (1985)
and its sequel, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1987).
Other unmemorable early credits include Police Academy 4: Citizens
on Patrol (1987), Action Jackson (1988) and the umpteenth remake
of Blood and Sand (1989).
Stone also struggled in TV, beginning with a tiny part in "Not Just
Another Affair" (CBS, 1982), the short-lived series Bay City Blues
(NBC, 1983) and gradually bigger (though not better) roles in the
TV movies "Calendar Girl Murders" (ABC, 1984), "The Vegas Strip
War" (NBC, 1984), the failed cop-show pilot "Hollywood Starr" (ABC,
1985), "Mr. and Mrs. Ryan" (ABC, 1986), "Badlands 2005" (ABC, 1988)
and "Tears in the Rain" (Showtime, 1988). Probably her only TV success
was a supporting role as Robert Mitchum's daughter-in-law in the
epic miniseries War and Remembrance (ABC, 1988-89).
Stone's first real break was playing Arnold Schwarzenegger's kick-boxing,
secret agent "wife" in Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi actioner Total Recall
(1990). After five more forgettable thrillers and comedies, she
finally achieved the proverbial "overnight" stardom as a sexually
voracious crime writer opposite Michael Douglas in Verhoeven's controversial
and popular erotic thriller, Basic Instinct (1992). Her pantie-less
leg-crossing scene brought Stone much-needed notoriety, but has
haunted her ever since.
In a more conventionally sympathetic role, Stone followed up with
another sizzling sex melodrama, Sliver (1993), which did middling
business stateside but proved a solid success overseas. Trying to
escape the sex-bomb trap, she begged for the frigid wife role in
Intersection (1994), which met with limited success. She again flexed
her international box-office clout paired with Sylvester Stallone
in the explosive actioner The Specialist (1994) but fared much less
well commercially with her next project, The Quick and the Dead
(1995), which marked her producing debut. Stone looked terrific
in Western duds playing something of a distaff version of a Clint
Eastwood-like gunfighter. Her directorial choice, Sam Raimi, helmed
the smartly derivative tale with style to spare but the critical
reception was uneven and the public stayed away. She rebounded with
her widely acclaimed performance as Ginger, the Vegas hustler who
wins the heart of Robert De Niro, in Casino (also 1995).
The highly-paid, much-in-demand star (she has her own production
company, Chaos, and has signed a first-look deal with Miramax) next
filmed a remake of the noir classic Diabolique with Isabelle Adjani
and Chazz Palmentieri and played a death-row inmate whose lawyer
(Rob Morrow) works to save her from execution in Last Dance (both
1996). Stone, a diva who thoroughly enjoys her hard-won stardom,
is a clever manipulator of her public image—on heavy press days,
she reportedly changes outfits between each interview and photo
session, a practice unheard of since the days of Joan Crawford and
Norma Shearer. She lives, fittingly enough, in a gated French chateau
in Beverly Hills.
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