Sharon continued: “Clearly, it triggered him. So he screams this at me across a whole group of people. And I’m not the person who goes, ‘Oh, excuse me, superstar.’ I pushed back my chair and said to him, ‘Let’s step outside.’ That’s how we first met.”
Once outside, she explained her connection to the people he had been discussing.
“And then we parted. I wouldn’t say as best friends, but amicably,” Sharon said.
Fast forward to casting Basic Instinct, she added, “I don’t think he wanted me to be his co-star.” Despite the rocky start, she notes that she and Douglas “have remained close friends” and that she admires him “tremendously.”
Douglas, on the other hand, claims he doesn’t remember the Cannes incident. His rep told People that the father of three is “very surprised [by Sharon’s quotes],” as “he doesn’t remember any argument in that timeframe” between them.
Michael Douglas clause
Fun fact about Michael Douglas: the legendary actor — who once dabbled in race-car driving — did most of his own stunt driving in Basic Instinct.
He had also a strict clause in all his contracts forbidding him from ever doing full-frontal nudity on screen, so no surprises there.
Inspired by a college memory
Around 27 minutes into Basic Instinct, movie history was quietly being made. Sharon Stone’s infamous leg-uncrossing scene? Totally not in Joe Eszterhas’ original script.
The idea came to director Paul Verhoeven on set, inspired by a college memory of a woman at a party who had done the exact same thing to embarrass him.
Stone has revealed in multiple interviews that Verhoeven asked her to remove her underwear for the shot because “they were too bright and reflected at the camera.”
She agreed, assuming her most private parts wouldn’t actually be visible.
It wasn’t until an early preview that Stone realized the shot had been used, and yes, it showed more than she expected.
“I was in a state of shock,” Stone said. “At the end of the movie, I got up, walked over to Paul Verhoeven and slapped him.”
”She knew exactly what we were doing..”
Stone admitted she was mostly upset that Verhoeven hadn’t discussed it with her first, but ultimately decided to let the scene stay.
She felt it fit Catherine Tramell’s free-spirited, mischievous personality.
”I thought about it for a few days and I knew in my heart, he was right. I hated that it existed, I hated it more that he stole it from me instead of allowing me to choose. But he was right,” Sharon said.
Verhoeven has repeatedly defended his version of events:
“She knew exactly what we were doing. I told her over dinner that it was based on a story of a woman whom I knew when I was a student, who did the crossing of her legs without panties regularly at parties. When my friend told her we could see her vagina, she said, ‘Of course, that’s why I do it.’ Then Sharon and I decided to do a similar sequence.”
Despite the heated debates, Verhoeven and Stone insist there’s no bad blood. They just…remember things differently.
This cheeky scene went on to become one of the most talked-about, parodied, and referenced moments in film history, proof that sometimes, a single leg-cross can make Hollywood history.
Catherine’s power play… and a sneaky cigarette
Sharon Stone turned the iconic interrogation scene in Basic Instinct into a masterclass in confidence and mischief. Rather than letting the male officers intimidate her character, Stone played Catherine Tramell like it was a game.
“The ruse they use — ‘We have the power, we’re going to show you’—didn’t cut the mustard with Catherine,” Stone told Playboy. “Her attitude was, ‘You’re so powerful. Aren’t you cute!’ And, of course, she had all the power. These men put her in a position where she was alone in a chair in the center of an empty room—surrounded. That would be a very intimidating position, unless she disarmed them, which she did. At the police station, she could have been stricken and scared. But instead she thought, ‘This is going to be fun. Oh, so you want me to sit in the middle of the room here? Oh, charming. Why is that? You want to make sure you can look up my dress? Okay, you can look up my dress.’ It was a game.”
And while the scene became legendary for its power dynamics, eagle-eyed fans have noticed a quirky blooper: Sharon’s cigarette keeps disappearing and reappearing throughout the interrogation. One moment it’s between her fingers, the next it’s gone — then back again — adding a little unintentional magic to an already unforgettable scene.
Michael Douglas was all in for the sex scenes
Michael Douglas has shared that one reason he jumped at Basic Instinct was to keep sex scenes alive in Hollywood. He worried they were vanishing thanks to the AIDS epidemic. Because of the AIDS epidemic, both Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone had to wear protective genital pads while filming the sex scenes.