Sharon Stone is sharing her thoughts on people fearing aging and nudity. In a recent video on social media, the actress offered an unfiltered take on the taboos.
Sharon Stone discusses her reaction to people’s fear of ‘aging’ and ‘nudity’
Sharon Stone took to her Instagram to share a candid video talking about aging and nudity. The clip sees the Basic Instinct star recall her experience during her studio tour. Stone remembered how the filming crew asked to remove a naked woman’s painting. She wrote her feelings in the caption.
“I got really fired up about this when I was touring my studio a few weeks back,” Stone said. The 67-year-old continued, “The filming crew had requested to move a painting out of shot, “the Goddess” whom happens to be a naked woman.”
Stone also mentioned, “Why in 2026 are we still afraid of aging & living in our own selves.” The Golden Globe Award winner further added, “We are more than appearance.” She explained, “We are artists, mothers, sisters, wives, nurses, teachers… and the list goes on!”
Moreover, Stone expressed how “we are afraid of nudity on our screens, our bodies, our home.. but not violence or every other thing we are constantly bombarded with day in and day out?” In the video, the iconic actress said, “Are we supposed to be terrified when we look in the mirror?”
She continued, “Is it supposed to be a secret when we pee and poo and brush our teeth?” Stone added, “Why are we supposed to be afraid of our own human self? It’s like the weirdest idea in the world to me.”
The mother of three added, “Excuse me, I wear it every day.” She further stated, “I get up in it. I go to sleep in it. I pee in it. I poos in it.” Stone exclaimed, “It’s my apartment. I live here.” In another video, she explained how one should not be “afraid” of oneself. Stone explained one shouldn’t be afraid of their bodies and should accept their human selves.
NEW YORK (AP) — When Kristen Wiig steps out of a vintage Rolls-Royce in the opening scene of Season 2 of “Palm Royale,” she’s sporting a tall, yellow, fringed hat, gold platform sandals and sunny bell bottoms, with fabric petals that sway with every determined step. It’s the first clue that the costumes on the female-driven comedy are taking center stage.
The Apple TV show made a splash in its first season with the starry cast, high production values and ubiquitous grasshopper cocktail. Wiig’s character, Maxine, tries to break into Palm Beach high society in 1969 and bumps heads with co-stars Carol Burnett, Allison Janney, Leslie Bibb and Laura Dern. But also playing a starring role are the vintage designer frocks that reflect each character.
Kristen Wiig in “Palm Royale.” (Erica Parise/Apple TV via AP)
Kristen Wiig in “Palm Royale.” (Erica Parise/Apple TV via AP)
For Season 2, which premiered this week, Emmy-winning costume designer Alix Friedberg says she and her team coordinated “thousands” of looks that reflect the characters’ jet-setting style. She says 50-60% of the brightly colored and graphic print costumes are original vintage designer pieces, sourced by shoppers and costume designers.
“The looks are so iconic. Sometimes Kristen will walk in in something, and it brings tears to my eyes,” Kaia Gerber — who plays Mitzi — told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
The creative process entails more than shopping
If not original vintage, Friedberg’s team builds the costumes, and if a character has to wear an outfit in multiple scenes or in big dance numbers, the team may create duplicates to preserve continuity. Friedberg says she was lucky to find so many vendors with vintage designer pieces in great condition.
“(Bibb’s character) Dinah wears a few original Oscar de la Renta pieces that are really so perfect. Bill Blass was a big one, Oleg Cassini,” Friedberg says. “There’s a dress that (Janney’s character) Evelyn wears that’s this all emerald green jersey, it’s an original Halston and it’s so stunning on her and it really does sort of evoke what’s to come in the ‘70s.”
Allison Janney in “Palm Royale.” (Erica Parise/Apple TV via AP)
Allison Janney in “Palm Royale.” (Erica Parise/Apple TV via AP)
Janney calls Friedberg “brilliant” and marveled at her talent at finding pieces that are like works of art. Some of her favorites were the characters’ après-ski looks in the Swiss Alps — but she finds it hard to pick an ultimate favorite.
“All of them just make me feel divine. And the hair is just a masterpiece, and the makeup — it all goes together to just create Evelyn and I barely have to do anything,” Janney says.
Costumes can be funny
The costumes also help heighten the comedy. Friedberg says Evelyn’s stoic and deadpan character elicits laughs with some of her over-the-top getups.
“She’s delivering this dialogue, these lines with, like, seven wigs on top of her,” Friedberg says. “The absurdity comes out really in how these women present themselves time and time again. … It was just so much fun to get to laugh and wink at the audience.”
Carol Burnett in “Palm Royale.” (Erica Parise/Apple TV via AP)
Carol Burnett in “Palm Royale.” (Erica Parise/Apple TV via AP)
Burnett called costume fittings on the show “great fun” and said they helped her find her character, the scheming Norma. “I work from the outside in. I have to know what I’m going to look like,” she says.
Norma’s signature turban started as a practical idea to help Burnett save time in hair and makeup. “The first time she put it on, we were both like, ‘Oh, that’s really so fabulous,’ and every time she came out as Norma without the turban, I really missed it,” Friedberg says. “Each time we built her a dress, we always had to sort of think about what the turban would be, and then it started to switch, and we started designing the turbans before the dress!”
Season 2 of Apple TV’s “Palm Royale” features fabulous costumes and sets, lots of laughs and an undercurrent theme of feminism and female friendship. (Nov. 10)
Many looks go deeper than sparkly sequins
The costumes also help set the tone for the female empowerment theme that permeates this season. “Evelyn wore a lot more pants — which seems ridiculous to say today — but back then that was a real power move,” Friedberg says.
Leslie Bibb in “Palm Royale.” (Erica Parise/Apple TV via AP)
Leslie Bibb in “Palm Royale.” (Erica Parise/Apple TV via AP)
Bibb had ideas to show how Dinah evolves from her trophy wife persona. “I knew this season was about her finding sort of her own wealth without a man … and what that looked like. I always have been obsessed with Sharon Stone in ‘Casino,’” Bibb says — and so they “stole” a bit of that look. “We really have Dinah going into pantsuits and just a different sense of her and she’s really becoming her most modern self.”
Friedberg conveyed the privilege and simplicity of the rich men in the series through clothing as well. Josh Lucas plays Douglas, who suffers some disappointments this season, reflected in his costumes.
“What if we approach Douglas where he’s always been dressed by women in his life? He’s always been dressed by someone else. He’s never shopped,” Lucas says he posed to Friedberg (who happens to be his sister-in-law in real life). “And for the first time, (his wife’s) character is not doing that, so he only has three hole-filled Hawaiian shirts.”
He’s in fact the rare character who repeats outfits, Friedberg notes. “You can kind of see them, as the series goes along, getting a little bit more and more threadbare,” she says.
Kaia Gerber in “Palm Royale.” (Erica Parise/Apple TV via AP)
Kaia Gerber in “Palm Royale.” (Erica Parise/Apple TV via AP)
Gerber’s character gets a major makeover this season after coming into money. The actor gushed about Friedberg’s intentional designs as Mitzi finds her “womanhood and her power.”
“It was so fun to be able to be wearing these expensive gowns and jewelry and the hair and the makeup, and how that really sort of parallels Mitzi’s inner journey as well,” she says.
The costumes may be eye candy, but Friedberg says each look also carries deeper meaning.
“Maxine wears this dress that was an original Oscar de la Renta dress,” Friedberg says. “It’s very much something that Norma would wear, and it is saying to the audience without saying to the audience that she’s arrived, it’s her time, it’s time for her to rule.”
Sharon Stone has a rising star in her family as her eldest son Roan has followed in her famous footsteps.
The 66-year-old actress proudly shared a photo of the 23-year-old on Friday posing for a mirror selfie as he enjoyed his first day on the set of his new mystery project.
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In the image, Roan is reclining in a chair wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, with his tattooed chest and muscular physique on display.
Captioning the snap, Sharon penned: “ROAN JOSEPH STONE. DAY 1 on set. Welcome to the family biz kid have fun.”
Sharon’s followers appeared to be very happy with her latest share as many couldn’t resist complimenting Roan’s appearance.
“He’s so handsome,” one replied. A second said: “He’s beautiful like you.” A third added: “Gorgeous!”
Alongside Roan – whom Sharon adopted in 2000 with her then-husband Phil Bronstein – she is also mom to sons Lair, 18, and Quinn, 17, who she adopted in 2005 and 2006, respectively, following her divorce from Phil in 2004.
Speaking of her decision to adopt in 2019, she told British Vogue: “When you adopt, you [realize] any child could be your child, any person could be your relative.
“After that you never see the world in the same way again. I’m connected to everyone on this planet. And that’s a miracle in and of itself.”
Sharon has been candid about her tumultuous journey with motherhood, particularly her difficult custody battle over Roan with her ex-husband.
At the time of her divorce from Phil, the former couple reportedly agreed on joint custody, with Roan living primarily with his father in San Francisco during the school year.
However, Phil was granted primary custody and Sharon was only allowed visitation rights. She challenged the court’s decision in 2008, hoping to move Roan to live with her in Los Angeles, but the request was denied.
During an appearance on the podcast Table For Two with Bruce Bozzi last in March, Sharon claimed she lost custody of Roan because of her role in 1992’s Basic Instinct.
She explained: “I lost custody of my child. When the judge asked my child – my tiny little boy, ‘Do you know your mother makes sex movies?’ Like, this kind of abuse by the system – that I was considered what kind of parent I was, because I made that movie.”
Sharon continued: “People are walking around with no clothes on at all on regular TV now and you saw maybe like a sixteenth of a second of possible nudity of me – and I lost custody of my child.”
Detailing how losing custody of her child affected her health, she added: “I ended up in the Mayo Clinic with extra heartbeats in the upper and lower chambers of my heart…it broke my heart.”
Despite the separation, Sharon and Roan remained close throughout his childhood, and he now lives with her and his two brothers in California.
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There is a world where charcoal-colored snakes coil through clouds of pink and blue, where banyan trees hover almost translucent, where colors curve and nature unravels … a world of acrylic on canvas that you might be surprised to learn comes from the brushstrokes of activist and actor Sharon Stone.
“Nature is almost, like, this free hand of God, if you will – flowers, tulips, dandelions,” she said. “You don’t have to paint a dandelion exactly like that, you know what I mean? They can be the feeling of the dandelion.”
She knows it’s easy to be cynical about celebrities trying their hand in the art world. At 65, she’s heard all the whispers: “Everybody feels like, well, ’cause she’s old, and she’s too old to be a sex symbol anymore. And she’s too old to do that. So, we can dismiss her into her painting thing.”
The reaction so far has been far from negative. Last year, Stone was invited to have a gallery show in Los Angeles. Then came a show called “Welcome to My Garden,” currently on view at the C. Parker Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut.
The shows have excited both critics and collectors. Her works are now selling for tens of thousands of dollars. It is now, she says, a full-on business, though one created by accident. “I didn’t have any real intentions, except just following my passion,” she said.
Sharon Stone at work.
CBS News
Cowan asked, “Does it matter whether they’re buying it because they love the work, or because it’s Sharon Stone, the actress? Does it matter to you?”
“People come to see my art now, first, just ’cause it’s me,” Stone said. “But I feel just fine about that, because I’ve earned being me. But no, I’m totally comfortable. If you want to buy my work because it matches your sofa … know what I mean? No, I’m totally good with that.”
“Protection, Peace, and Power” by Sharon Stone. Acrylic on canvas. On display in the exhibit “Sharon Stone: Welcome to My Garden,” at the C. Parker Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut.
CBS News
When she hit it big in the ’90s with movies like “Basic Instinct,” it was pretty clear there was more to Stone than just her looks. She proved she could hold her own against the likes of Gene Hackman in the western “The Quick and the Dead.” And there were few chip fits like the one Stone threw in Martin Scorsese’s “Casino.” That role got her an Oscar nomination. But Stone says, even back then, acting was only a small piece of her personal puzzle. “Everybody told me to stay in my lane, and my lanes started to just get so narrow,” she said. “I don’t think I’m just an actress, or a writer, or a painter. I think I’m just an artist.”
The last time “Sunday Morning” met with Stone was back in 2018, and given the severity of the brain hemorrhage that she told us she’d suffered two decades ago, it’s actually a miracle Stone’s doing anything, let alone painting. It had affected her speech, her hearing, her walking. “There was about a 5% chance of me living,” she explained.
Fast forward to 2020, during the pandemic a friend of Stone’s gave her a paint-by-numbers kit, and she found herself at an easel in her bedroom. She posted the result on Instagram, noting: “It actually looks like something, which I find completely remarkable.”
“I did the paint-by-numbers with a lot of diligence because I wanted to get my brush strokes together,” she said. “To have the brush strokes perfect and flawless is a really painstaking, irritating, complicated exercise. It really is a pain in the ass.”
But that posterior painting pain did awaken something very familiar: Stone has actually been painting for most of her life. She started as a young girl growing up in rural Pennsylvania, where her aunt taught her almost everything she knew. When asked for a piece of painting advice she learned from her, Stone said, “I think just that, you’re not wrong. There is no wrong.”
She has her own advice as well: “You don’t want people to ever really totally figure out a painting.”
While attending Edinboro University of Pennsylvania on a writing scholarship, Stone not only majored in art, but made art to support herself, living the life of a starving artist. “I sold every painting I made,” she said. “I mean, I was selling them for, like, twenty-five bucks when I was in college, just to eat.”
To watch her work all these years later is to watch someone in an almost trance-like state, open to whatever moves her.
“I feel what’s coming through the canvas here now,” she said. “It’s okay to not know, you know, and it’s also okay to go with not knowing. I’m letting it evolve and tell me what it wants to be….”
“I think if you listen to the highest consciousness and follow that voice, how do you go wrong with that?” Stone asked.
Works by Sharon Stone on display.
CBS News
Paintings in a back room of her Beverly Hills home are being prepared to be shipped to Berlin, where Stone will open her very first international show next month.
She’s certainly not done with acting, but for now at least Sharon Stone has traded the red carpet for a palette with every color under the sun.
“I do it because I’m fully and wholly immersed in it, and I love it, and I have to,” she said. “‘Cause I’d rather do it than anything else.”
Sharon Stone
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Story produced by Jay Kernis. Editor: Mike Levine.
Back when she was a university student, Sharon Stone lived the life of a starving artist, selling her paintings for $25 apiece. Today, the Oscar-nominated actress has returned to her love of painting, with her works now selling in the tens of thousands. She has had two gallery shows in the U.S., with a third about to open in Berlin. Correspondent Lee Cowan visits Stone at her Los Angeles studio and watches her create a new work.
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Sharon Stone’s father was her singular lifeline at one point.
Life took a devastating turn for the actress in 2001 following a ruptured vertebral artery bled into her brain for nine days, leaving her with a 1 percent chance of living.
Headlining this week’s issue of People, the critically praised actress, 65, remembered the dark patch as a lonely one: “My father was there for me but I would say that was about it.”
“I understand if you want to live with solid citizens, don’t come to Hollywood.”
Life was glowing for Stone before the health scare. She had received her first Oscar nomination five years before for “Casino”; months before, she adopted her son, Roan, with her husband, Phil Bronstein. She’s since adopted two more children: Laird, 18 and Quinn, 17.
“I lost everything,” she recalls. “I lost all my money. I lost custody of my child. I lost my career. I lost all those things that you feel are your real identity and your life.”
“I never really got most of it back, but I’ve reached a point where I’m okay with it, where I really do recognize that I’m enough.”
Stone has gone on to become a major inspiration, joining the Board of Neurological Foundation, the medical institute Stone’s brain surgeon Dr. Michael Lawton leads in Arizona.
Today, nudity in film and television seems almost commonplace, but for stars of decades past, there have been real-life repercussions for even the smallest of glimpses.
Actor Sharon Stone, known for playing some of the most iconic femme fatales of the 1990s, said she lost custody of her son because of her role in the 1992 film Basic Instinct.
During a podcast appearance on Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi, Stone, 65, said judicial prejudice in her 2004 divorce case allowed for the movie to be “weaponized against her.”
While fighting for custody of her now 22-year-old son Roan — whom she adopted with her ex-husband Phil Bronstein in 2000 — Stone said the judge asked her son if he was aware his mother made “sex movies.”
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The judge’s question was likely a reference to a since-iconized interrogation scene in Basic Instinct where Stone uncrosses her legs while seated.
“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,” she said on the podcast released Tuesday. “Are you kidding?”
Though she was granted visitation rights to her son, Stone said the loss of custody contributed to cardiac issues that saw her hospitalized.
“I ended up in the Mayo Clinic with extra heartbeats in the upper and lower chambers of my heart,” she said. “It broke my heart.”
The biases against Stone for the fleeting nudity in Basic Instinct were also felt outside of the courtroom. When she was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1993, the room of moviemakers laughed as her name was called.
“It was horrible. I was so humiliated,” Stone recalled. “Does anyone have any idea how hard it was to play that part? How gut-wrenching? How frightening? To try and carry this complex movie that was breaking all boundaries and everyone was protesting against, and the pressure. I auditioned for it for nine months. They offered it to 13 other people and now you’re laughing at me. I just wanted to crawl into a hole.
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“Now people walk around showing their penises 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.”
In her 2021 memoir The Beauty of Living Twice, Stone said she was unaware of the nude scene until the film was viewed alongside agents and lawyers. She wrote that director Paul Verhoeven tricked her into filming the scene when he insisted her white underwear was reflecting the light on camera.
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Verhoeven maintains a different account of filming the scene. In 2021, he told Variety that his “memory is radically different from Sharon’s memory.”
“That does not stand in the way and has nothing to do with the wonderful way that she portrayed Catherine Tramell,” he said. “She is absolutely phenomenal. We still have a pleasant relationship and exchange text messages.”
Stone has three adopted children. She later adopted Roan’s two brothers, Quinn and Kelly. Last year, Stone revealed she’s had nine miscarriages in her lifetime.
There are some who have speculated that we live in such a sexless time because of technology. Not just because porn made the transition to the internet, but because the human has essentially “become one” with the screen. Inferring an inherent lack of tactility that has extended into a general absence of desire for “tangible flesh.” Of course, this mainly applies to the generation known as Z, being that they’ve never experienced an era when the screen wasn’t an additional bodily appendage. And as the AI fuses into “RI” (“real” intelligence), the prospect for any interest in sex as it once existed in our erstwhile “horn dog” society continues to dissipate—and all with the sanction of those formerly most involved in “presenting it.” That is to say, Hollywood actors.
So it is that, on the heels of a Penn Badgley feature in Variety called “You Don’t Know Penn Badgley: Surviving Gossip Girl, Staying Sober with Blake Lively and Finding Himself in a Sexy Serial Killer,” the key remark many have taken away is the declaration on Badgley’s part that he will no longer “do” sex scenes. In the Kate Arthur-written article, she prefaces his aversion to a common expectation of the average mainstream actor’s job description with, “Less typically, he was also concerned [about] how inherently sexual the role [of Joe Goldberg] was, and how many intimate scenes he would have to film. In later seasons, the show has had an intimacy coordinator, but when production began in 2017, that job didn’t exist. The whole series revolves around Joe’s romantic fixations, and how he gets the women he’s fallen for to submit to his charms. You has a ton of sex.” But not so much in its fourth season, where Joe, now under the assumed identity of Jonathan Moore, has taken a shine to the “British prude” identity of an Austen character as he finds himself enmeshed in the inner circle of an elite London friend group (yes, it sounds kind of like Gossip Girl). Hence, the presence of a moniker like the “Eat the Rich Killer”—a “branding” that proves anti-capitalism is still capitalism in that it can be sold.
Among that crew is Kate Galvin (Charlotte Ritchie), a woman who initially passes herself off as “different” from the rest of her born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-their-mouth ilk but actually turns out to be the richest one among the lot (as is usually the way with rich people trying to pass themselves off as “just like us”). Before Joe finds this out, he’s already gone down the rabbit hole of his obsession with her, sidelining the one that brought him to Europe in the first place: Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle). When he follows her from Paris to London, he ends up staying in the latter city after a cover identity falls into his lap thanks Elliot Tannenberg (Adam James), a fixer hired by Love’s (Victoria Pedretti) father to find and kill Joe. Obviously, Elliot conveniently opts for a different approach to dealing with Joe, and now, “Jonathan” is on his merry way to clothed “sex” in a garden with Kate by episode three.
But, as Badgley was sure to mention in the Variety interview, “[On-set romance is] not a place where I’ve blurred lines. There’s almost nothing I could say with more consecration.” Which means he’s apparently “blurred” his memory about dating Blake “Serena van der Woodsen” Lively while the two starred in Gossip Girl together. Nonetheless, Badgley insisted, “That aspect of Hollywood has always been very disturbing to me—and that aspect of the job, that mercurial boundary—has always been something that I actually don’t want to play with at all.” And yet, if he, and more actors like him, don’t want to “play with” it, then one must ask the blunt question: what, exactly, are you being paid the big bucks for to have so many “caveats” and “limitations” in order to take on a role?
Ah, but then there is the cry of “artistic integrity” and “morals.” It is the latter category that finds Badgley hesitating on sex scenes more and more as he told Variety, “It’s important to me in my real life to not have them… [To] my fidelity in my relationship… And actually, it was one of the reasons that I initially wanted to turn the role down. I didn’t tell anybody that. But that is why.” Ironically, the person he wants to show fidelity to is Domino Kirke, the sister of Jemima a.k.a. Jessa from Girls, a show that prided itself on gratuitous sex scenes. Maybe that’s why Kirke was the one who encouraged him to do it regardless of his “misgivings.” And, after all, if Taylor Swift could loosen the reins on Joe Alwyn to “let” him engage in all the sex scenes of Conversations with Friends (which Jemima Kirke also appears in), then surely Domino could do the same. Even if Badgley might have had the option to give Joe more action through the wonders of CGI—as was the case in, of all movies, You People, when Jonah Hill and Lauren London didn’t actually kiss at the end.
In point of fact, the sudden inalienable right of the actor to become “bashful” about the notion of onscreen intimacy—at a time when intimacy coordinators are actually in existence to make everything feel as “safe” as possible—seems to open the door further for AI as an option to oust real actors from the jobs they won’t actually do. Regardless of how many millions they’re being paid to do it. Whether or not the shift in Hollywood’s willingness to “perform” stems from being a reflection of the sexless culture at large, there’s one thing that’s certain: “sexiness” as a concept has all but disappeared in large part because all mystery has disappeared. Once an industry that could pass itself off as something to aspire to with the tinsel and glitz promoted in now-defunct movie magazines like Photoplay and Screenland, the gradual decline of post-studio system Hollywood coincided with the advent of entities like television and, then, the internet. Therefore, unchecked gossip rags like TMZ and Perez Hilton that effectively dismantled any notion of “glamor” or “aspirational desire” re: being famous. A notable example of that in the 00s occurred with Britney Spears as she went from being the teen dream to a “Jezebel slut” who “deserved” her downfall, courtesy of constant media stalking that drove her to rightful madness.
Incidentally, Spears was a large part of why sexiness remained strong in the early 00s before giving way to the “trashy-chic” aura exuded in the mid-00s by paparazzi shots of her looking sloppy drunk while exiting a club or accidentally flashing her pantyless snatch as she got out of a car. Decidedly not sexy so much as sleazy because it took away all semblance of mystery. An additional factor in the assurance of sexlessness in entertainment today is the result of the post-#MeToo reckoning, with most men quaking in their boots about being accused of “untoward” behavior. Least of all portraying something that might end up being construed as “non-consensual” or “glamorizing rape.” With that in mind, the Badgley feature was also sure to point out that the actor is increasingly uncomfortable with sex scenes because “he’s also now older than his romantic interests on the show. ‘Didn’t used to be the case,’ he says.” And, where once even the vastest age gap between stars (i.e., Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina) wouldn’t have caused the slightest bat of an eyelash, in the present moment, the only person still willing to carry on with that type of shit is, well, Woody Allen.
What it all amounts to is that the overall climate of fear about doing or saying or, yes, acting the wrong way has undeniably and “subconsciously” fed into the sex scene about-face among actors like Badgley, who insist that such scenes are “superfluous” or “don’t add anything to the story.” Obviously, someone like Paul Verhoeven would disagree. But then, he’s of a different generation (and also not American). More of the Bernardo Bertolucci school of thought on “impromptu” sexual interactions (e.g., the infamous butter rape one in Last Tango in Paris), as Sharon Stone would later note of Verhoeven’s snatch shot in Basic Instinct, “After we shot [the movie], I got called in to see it. Not on my own with the director, as one would anticipate, given the situation that has given us all pause, so to speak, but with a room full of agents and lawyers, most of whom had nothing to do with the project. That was how I saw my vagina shot for the first time, long after I’d been told, ‘We can’t see anything—I just need you to remove your panties, as the white is reflecting the light, so we know you have panties on.’”
And yet, as mentioned before, actors now have the unprecedented advantage of working on sets that would never allow for something like what befell Maria Schneider or Sharon Stone to happen again. Only to thumb their nose (or genitals, in this case) at it and declare, “No, I have my principles.” Thing is, if one is getting paid for anything, no such claim can really be made.
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Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan is known for his charm and with that he has captivated many. The latest to join is the Hollywood star Sharon Stone, at the Red Sea Film Festival. In a video, Sharon can be seen looking at Shah Rukh with awe after spotting him right next to her.
Sharon first gasps and then says, “Oh my God!” as the host introduces Shah Rukh Khan to the crowd. She was seen wearing a black pair of gloves on her hands and a beige dress. She screamed and Shah Rukh watched her response and leaned in to say hello. They were seen on camera exchanging “Namaste” as well.
During the ceremony, Shah Rukh Khan received recognition as well. He accepted his award and addressed the audience in Arabic. He apologised in the opening for the speech’s length. He remarked jokingly that I am overjoyed because this is the first time I have been recognised and taken seriously at a film festival.
Shah Rukh and Kajol attended the Red Sea Film Festival because the opening film was their smash hit Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. In one of the videos, SRK can be seen singing Kajol the Tujhe Dekha Toh song from DDLJ. He also gave Kajol his well-known line from Baazigar.
After receiving the award, he said, “I am truly honoured to receive this award from the Red Sea International Film Festival. It’s wonderful to be here among my fans from Saudi and the region who have always been huge supporters of my films. I’m looking forward to celebrating the region’s talent and being a part of this exciting film community. Film is a unifier because it transits shared human experiences across cultures. You like a film because it stirs your emotions, be it in whatever language or culture it is from. And Thank God for subtitles. It brings all that is human to the fore and it shows perhaps better than any other art, how despite the immense diversity of the world we live in, our basic pursuits and emotions are the same.”
“Cinema celebrates diversity. It doesn’t stop short of fully exploring differences. And doing so, in the most beautiful fashion, it teaches us not to be afraid of those differences,” he added.
Stars at Saudi Arabia’s second annual Red Sea International Film Festival have had to do more than their standard promotional duties. Special guests Sharon Stone and Guy Ritchie have both defended their reasons for attending the event, which is happening in a country with a history ofhuman rights abuses.
“I’m an envelope breaker, my success is to break the envelope, just like coming here,” Stone said during her hour-plus talk at the fest, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Everyone said to me, ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ And I said, ‘I’m afraid not to know. So why don’t I go, see how it really is and I’ll tell you?’ What I’ve learned is that what everybody tells you isn’t always the way it is.”
Elsewhere during her appearance, she addressed criticism of women’s rights in the country. “Women are not here just to serve men. Men are also here to serve women,” Stone continued. “And if we are not serving equally, then we are disrespecting our maker.” The actor also recalled controversy she faced decades ago as a spokesperson for AmFAR, stating that she had “no idea of the resistance, the cruelty, the hate, the oppression that we would face,” according to Variety. While in a nation where homosexuality is criminalized, Stone recounted how her work with the organization “really destroyed” her career for an eight-year period. “I was threatened…repeatedly,” she added. “My life was threatened, and the more it happened, the more I thought I needed to stick with it.”
Stone capped off her speech by reflecting on her visit to Saudi Arabia. “I’m just a kid from Pennsylvania. I grew up with Amish people who drove into my driveway in their horse and buggy,” she said, according to THR. “There was no possibility for me to come to Saudi Arabia to meet you.”
Meanwhile, Ritchie, recipient of one of the festival’s honorary awards, told THR about accepting an invite: “Whatever I can do to encourage creativity, particularly in my world of film, I’m all about that,” adding, “I’m all about encouragement and the collaboration of culture.” The director and first-time Saudi Arabia visitor also stated that “some degree of the future lies here.”
The Red Sea Film Festival’s second edition arrives five years to the week that Saudi Arabia announced it would lift its 35-year ban on cinemas. Michael Page, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, told The Guardian that Saudi Arabian officials use “festivals as a reputation laundering tool, in the same way that they have used previous celebrity and sporting events to try to whitewash their quite terrible image.”
Attendees at the festival, which runs through December 10, include Spike Lee, Priyanka Chopra, Luca Guadagnino, Jackie Chan, Henry Golding, Michelle Rodriguez, and Freida Pinto, among others. Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone, who serves as president of the jury for the international competition, said Saudi Arabia was often misunderstood, urging that “people who judge it too harshly should come to visit and see it for themselves.” Several sources told The Hollywood Reporter that “many stars had been handsomely paid to appear” at the event. (Vanity Fair has reached out to the festival for comment.)