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Unbeknown to Sharon Stone at the time but her 1992 appearance in Basic Instinct would change the course of her career forever. For those unacquainted with the infamous interrogation scene, the then-32-year-old actress was instructed to remove her underpants and perform a risquè scene where she crosses and uncrosses her leg in a tiny cream mini dress.
Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct has continued to be a cult classic perhaps in part thanks to that scene. Thus, it is almost unbelievable to think that Stone was paid just $500,000 USD in comparison to her male co-star Michael Douglas who earned a whopping $14 million. In a first-person essay for InStyle this week, the 63-year-old explained on the 30th anniversary how she negotiated her own slice of compensation.
“From the moment I read the script, I knew I was the right person for the role,” Stone wrote. For the film she collaborated with costume designer, Ellen Mirojnick.
“Ellen … took me to Rodeo Drive and said, ‘You can pick out any one thing that you want for your character,'” she explained.
“We decided to go for all white because my character had a very Hitchcockian vibe,” she added. “But Ellen designed the dress so that I could sit like a man if he was being interrogated. It gave me the ability to move my arms and legs, take up space, and exercise control over a room full of men.”
Stone recalled the moment Verhoeven asked her to remove underwear. She was assured by the cinematographer that they could not see anything past her skirt. “Of course, when I saw the completed movie for the first time with a bunch of other people, you could see right up my skirt,” Stone said.
Because of the poor pay, she negotiated to keep her wardrobe from the film which included a cream Hèrmes cape and that tiny high-neck custom dress. She has never worn the dress since that fateful scene and keeps it as a reminder of the valuable lessons she has learned following the release of the film.
“I’ve kept the white dress and coat. It was zipped up in a garment bag on the set, and it has never been opened since,” she shared. “I broke the zipper, so it’s hermetically sealed like a piece of art or a very cool time capsule.”
