Michael Douglas left ‘very surprised’ by Sharon Stone’s argument claim
Michael Douglas has responded to Sharon Stone’s claims that the pair had an argument before starring in Basic Instinct together.
Stone, 67, claimed that the pair fought at the Cannes Film Festival about her acquaintance and their children in a new interview with Business Insider.
“I said something and he responded to me, saying, ‘What the f*** do you know?’ It was in regard to a father-child relationship,” she said. The dispute was resolved, not “as best friends, but amicably”.
The actor-turned-artist said the disagreement made her feel Douglas did not want to star alongside her in the 1992 erotic thriller that would become her breakthrough role.
“So fast forward to casting Basic Instinct,” I don’t think he wanted me to be his co-star,” she said.
However, representatives for Douglas said that the event was news to the Wall Street Oscar winner, who was “very surprised” by Stone’s comments.
“He doesn’t remember any argument in that timeframe,” the actor’s reps said.
“He actually only remembers seeing and meeting Sharon for the first time when he saw [director] Paul Verhoeven’s screen test of her for Basic Instinct and he said, ‘Absolutely, she’s the one.”
Douglas’s reps said he had “definitely spent time with” Stone at Cannes, “but later, when they were promoting Basic Instinct in 1992”.
“By the time they’d done the movie, they were friends,” the statement concluded.
Stone has made a number of claims about her time on the film. In her 2021 memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, Stone alleged that she was asked to have sex with her co-star, to enhance onscreen chemistry, by an unnamed producer.
She also accused the film’s director of not informing her of how exposed her genitals would be in the infamous shot where she uncrosses her legs.
“Sharon is lying,” Verhoeven, now 87, said in 2017. “Any actress knows what she’s going to see if you ask her to take off her underwear and point there with the camera.”
Stone said of the experience: “The role was by far the most stretching that I had ever done in terms of considering the dark side of myself.
“It was terrifying. I had walked in my sleep three times during production, twice waking fully dressed in my car in my garage. I had hideous nightmares.”
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