Sharon Stone convinced the casino team for the best actress Oscar
“I mean, they told me we could be in the running for supporting actor and it would win the Academy Award,” Stone recalled. “They’re never going to let him win the Best Actor Oscar.”
Sharon Stone always prefers to bet on herself.
The “Casino” actress revealed that she was encouraged to enter the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in the 1995 Martin Scorsese film. But Stone was determined to take her rightful place in the Best Actress category, even if it reduced her chances of winning against Emma Thompson (“Sense and Sense”), Meryl Streep (“The Bridges of Madison County”), Elisabeth Shue. (“Leaving Las Vegas”) and Susan Sarandon (“Dead Man Walking”), who finally received the Oscar in 1996.
“I was very surprised. I mean, they told me we could be in the running for supporting actor and he would win the Oscar. The leading lady can’t win, but they’re never going to let her win an Oscar because it was me,” Stone said on a recent iHeartPodcast.Table for two with Bruce Bozzi” episode, referring to his controversial fame following “Basic Instinct”.
Stone continued, “And I said, ‘But I’m the main character in the movie, so I want to apply for the lead role.’ And they said, “But you’re not going to win.” And I said, ‘I don’t care. I’m not in it to win it – that’s not the point here. The point is the actual work that I did, and I worked with Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and James Woods for five months. I completed the work, so I belong to the category of work done by me. I’m not in it for you to say, ‘Okay, Sharon, you can have it. The statue can be yours. No. I’m in the lane I pulled into.
Stone admitted: “So I didn’t expect to get the Oscar because people don’t think about me actress. They don’t think of me as one he loves his craft because I’m not walking around saying that. I don’t go around saying ‘I’m a dramatic actress’. I don’t walk around having discussions on TV about my ‘dramatic acting’. I don’t talk about my ‘art’ because I don’t think so at all.”
The “Sliver” actress likened explaining her approach to acting to “trying to explain how the wind meets the trees.”
“What I do, and that’s why I like playing people who have lived, is because I feel like I’m opening my soul and letting them speak through me. And that’s why I’m not a ‘drama actress’. I’m a spiritual channel,” Stone said. “And when I have the extraordinary joy and honor of receiving a script that was actually meant for me, I know it when I get it, and I feel like I knew it when I got the script for ‘Casino.’ They didn’t know when I got the “Casino” script and they saw a lot of other people. I just said, “I’ll wait until they’re done with him.”
He added, “I was very blessed to get this role,” and called his co-stars Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci “the best actors in the business” and Scorsese “the greatest director of all time.”
“I love that movie. I love those guys, I love Nick Pileggi’s script, I love those people,” Stone shared.
And “Casino” isn’t the first time Hollywood’s elite hasn’t taken it seriously. Stone recalled being invited to the first Academy Awards ceremony to introduce “Basic Instinct” before its release. With no stylist willing to dress her, Stone attended the movie’s biggest night in a “Betsey Johnson polyester jumpsuit” that she bought herself.
Stone later detailed that she was “laughed” at the Golden Globes when she was read for Best Actress for “Basic Instinct.”
“It was terrible! I was so humiliated!” Stone shared. “And I (thought), ‘Does anyone have any idea how hard it was to play this role? How harrowing and scary and how much work it was to get this part right and try to carry this complex film forward that really broke through. all limits, and all protested—and against the pressure?”
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