Sharon Stone Shares The 'Fantastic' Thing She Did That Made People Stop Liking Her
Her choice may not have been popular, but it made all the difference — and she has absolutely no regrets.
FeatureFlash Photo Agency / Shutterstock; San Fermin Pamplona / Canva Sharon Stone has become the kind of legendary Hollywood icon we don't see all that often anymore. And you don't get to that status, especially as a woman, without having to fight for it.
Recently, Stone shared how her grit impacted those she's worked with, often making her very unpopular.
People stop liking Sharon Stone because she set boundaries — and she has absolutely no regrets.
Stone recently appeared on the podcast The LadyGang to talk to cohosts Keltie Knight, Becca Tobin and Jac Vanek about her meteoric rise in Hollywood after 1992's "Basic Instinct," the unconventional life she's lived ever since, the 2001 stroke that nearly ended it all, and the lessons she's learned now that she's in her 60s.
When someone is as charismatic, intelligent and, it must be said, gorgeous as Stone — not to mention a gazillionaire — it might seem like they have lived a charmed life of ease. But as Stone told the hosts, she's had to fight tooth and nail for the respect she now commands, including taking some steps that very much rubbed people the wrong way.
Stone said learning to set boundaries caused conflict with others, a situation she's come to view as 'fantastic' and 'healthy.'
"Everybody really likes you when you do everything everyone asks and tells you to do," Stone told the cohosts. "Nobody likes you when you have boundaries."
Ask anyone who's done it — that really is part of the process of boundary setting. In fact, therapists and psychologists say angry pushback should be expected when setting boundaries, because many people interpret them as exactly what Stone explained — an ultimatum and a denial of what they want.
For obvious reasons, this is all the more true when a woman is setting a boundary. But, as Stone went on to say, the benefits are worth it and far outweigh the detriments of being disliked.
As she put it, "The more that I understood what boundaries really meant, the less people started to like me and the more I understood how fantastic and healthy that was." Ultimately, there's a difference between being liked and being respected — a truth Stone knows all too well.
Stone's career has been peppered with ups and downs, and it took decades to finally get the hard-won respect she's earned in Hollywood.
Given her status, it might be difficult to believe that Stone was rarely taken seriously until shockingly recently. Because of the often explicit content and femme fatale roles she played — particularly in "Basic Instinct" and its 1993 follow-up "Sliver" — Stone was for years derided as a bimbo whose sole talent resided in her looks and body.
"People wanted to put me down, make fun of me," she told The LadyGang cohosts. "It would have been easier if they could have made me small. And so people tried to make me small for quite some time."
Even working with the likes of Martin Scorsese in 1995's "Casino," which garnered her an Oscar nomination and won her a Golden Globe, did little to afford her any respect.
"When I was nominated for the Golden Globe when they called my name, people laughed at me in the room," she shared. "It took two decades before people started to treat me with any kind of, I would say, regard about what I had accomplished."
But setting boundaries in small ways has been part of Stone's career path right from the start — and it's been integral to her success in surprising ways.
Part of what ultimately made Stone a break-out star in "Basic Instinct" was not how shocking the film was at the time, but Stone's seemingly preternatural understanding of how to leverage her looks on-camera to amp up her character Catherine Tramell's allure, even as she goes on her psychopathic murder spree.
And it turns out, if she hadn't stood her ground about one tiny detail in the film, it probably never would have happened. "The makeup artist put way too much makeup on me, and then I'd go into my trailer, and I'd take the makeup off," Stone revealed.
When the makeup artist chided her by saying, "I'm just going to keep putting it on you," she stood her ground, and simply replied, "And I'll just keep taking it off."
Sticking with her, well, instincts certainly paid off; her "Basic Instinct" look ended up setting trends in the 90s after its release, and helped make Stone an instantaneous household name.
The lesson from Stone's life, ultimately, is that telling people "no" and setting boundaries will rarely make you popular. But it will gain you respect and, even more importantly, help you become the best version of yourself. And Stone's right: That is pretty dang "fantastic."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.