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Sharon Stone: I Will Do Whatever It Takes | E03 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:10
  Randall Kaplan: Welcome to my podcast In Search of Excellence, our quest for greatness to be the very best we can be to learn, educate and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential. It's about planning for excellence, which requires hard work, dedication and perseverance. It's about believing in yourself. Achieving Excellence is our goal and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings.
• 4:12
  Randall Kaplan: We all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. Today, my guest is the amazingly talented Sharon Stone.
• 4:19
  Randall Kaplan: She's an incredible actress whose career spans more than four decades, and who achieved global superstardom with the movie Basic Instinct. She has been in 52 movies and as 143 awards for her acting, including a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture and Academy Award nomination, both for the movie Casino. She's appeared on the covers of over 300 celebrity magazines and fashion magazines throughout her career and was named by People magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. She's a producer, the mother of three sons, and has been an incredible humanitarian and philanthropist.
• 4:55
  Randall Kaplan: She's been honored by the Nobel Peace laureates and was given the Nobel Oh, peace summit award by the Dalai Lama. She's a breast cancer survivor and a stroke survivor. And the author of her recent really recently released best selling autobiography titled The beauty of living twice, which goes through her fascinating life, including how she overcame some incredible personal and professional challenges, which we're going to talk about in depth today. Sharon, Welcome to In Search of Excellence.
• 5:25
  Sharon Stone: Thank you. I'm really delighted to be here. I just want to clear up one thing, I am not a breast cancer survivor. I'm a breast tumor survivor. But lucky for me, my gigantic tumors turned out to be benign.
• 5:41
  Randall Kaplan: Thank you, thank you for the correction. I always start my podcast with our family. And from the moment we're born, our family helps shape our personality, our values, and the preparation for our future. You grew up in Meadville, Pennsylvania, a town of 12,000 people and an Irish family. Your mom was an accountant, and a homemaker.
• 6:02
  Randall Kaplan: Your dad was a tool and dye manufacturer and a factory worker, you have three siblings.
• 6:04
  Randall Kaplan: But I want to start with your mom, you wrote in your book that was very raw, that you didn't like her very much growing up.
• 6:12
  Randall Kaplan: In fact, at various points of the book, you said you hated her. Can you talk about your relationship with your mother?
• 6:20
  Sharon Stone: Yeah. I can like to start off by saying, we don't hate each other. And I like her now. But it was complicated, because my mother had such an horrific childhood. Which when you're a kid, and particularly kids of depression era, parents, or kids, I'm sure who were Holocaust survivors. You don't really know about your parents.
• 6:53
  Sharon Stone: Childhood. Not only that they had such horrible childhoods, but that their best way of survival was not talking about their childhood. And my mother was born in to just terrible poverty. Real, what was called hillbilly poverty, where I come from, and there were five kids in her family. One of whom was killed by a drunk driver and actually knocked right out of my mother's hand, crossing the street and she was killed and thrown in the air and came back down and was dead when she hit the ground as a very small child. My mother still says she remembers the state trooper who carried her into the house and put her to bed because she remembers his big hat. She had rickets and scurvy, from malnutrition. And the just extreme poverty her mother walked miles every day to the welfare office to try to get welfare tickets to feed her children. Her mother was a housekeeper and her mother was a housekeeper. You know, when you know it during those times, there were signs in the windows of the stores that said no dogs, no Irish, which is something that I think people don't really realize especially now during the Black Lives Matter movement.
• 8:41
  Sharon Stone: A certainly a lot of people in our country have forgotten that Irish were considered people of color in that time, and it was a very difficult period for all Irish immigrants, and my mother was just so abused and beaten so badly by her father, as was her mother, that she went to school and she was bleeding through the back of her gym suit, and was taken to the principal's office to see why. And it was as her father had beaten her and child welfare services, gave my mother away to a family who the mother had asthma and was unable to take care of her children. So my mother became the live in maid wash woman, housekeeper cook for this family when she was nine, and so she went to school and she saved her nickels and dimes that she was given to take the bus to buy her own winter coat.
• 9:57
  Sharon Stone: For example. And that's how she grew up. And for my mother, that was an incredible stroke of good luck, and great good fortune.
• 10:09
  Sharon Stone: And to this day, she considers that family that took her in as the greatest thing that ever happened to her and her greatest luck. Not that she was a child labor a child servant, and have never ever had a day of childhood. And so she and my father married when they were 16 and 17, respectively. And that was her life. So she didn't really understand how to treat children like children. Or to be a parent who would hug her kids, for example, or tell her kids that she loved them or that they were terrific or any of that kind of parent thing. Because there was nothing, nothing in her life that would have ever led her to believe that that was a parental activity.
• 11:10
  Randall Kaplan: We have some interesting similarities in our background. My grandmother was raised in foster care. And one day when she was six years old, and her sister was seven years old. Their mother had laughed, the dad dropped him off on the street corner in Detroit and says, I can't take this anymore.
• 11:28
  Randall Kaplan: And they found a Christian church that took them and give them some food and shelter, but they split them up when they were younger. And my grandmother bounced around to a lot of different foster care homes. And she lived with a family who basically treated her like a maid she had to sleep in a closet and she was the maid she cleaned the floors. She did not eat with the family. She ate separately, but she married my she met my grandfather when he was 16. And she married him when he was 16 as well. So I certainly can sympathize with the foster care background. And it's one of the causes I support very much is foster care. Let's talk about your grandmother as well. You said that, in the book, there has never been someone as beautiful as her what was your relationship with your grandmother? And then how did your mom and grandmother what was the mix there in terms of how they influenced you and your growing up? Well, my grandmother
• 13:22
  Sharon Stone: who was my father's mother, my father came from extraordinary wealth. When he was born. He was born into an oil family in Oil City, Pennsylvania. But when he was little, the there was a terrible. Well, they said it was an accident. But there is some speculation of over whether it was an accident and the oil oil well blew and killed everyone on the oil site. His partner who was his brother, my great uncle died and then my grandfather died of pneumonia quickly after that. And in those days, the money didn't go to women. Women had no rights. So my grandfather's money did not go to my grandmother, it went to my great uncle's 18 year old son.
• 14:13
  Sharon Stone: So you can imagine how that went. So my grandmother went from being quite wealthy, to being completely broke destitute very quickly. And my dad when he was four, and my uncle when he was three, were given to another uncle who first and then his great grandmother, and they lived in someone's barn stalls and did a farm work. And my grandmother went to work in an asylum and took her daughter, Vaughn with her. And that's how my, that side of the family grew up until my father worked and bought back the family home. And everybody moved back in there when my uncle came home from the Navy, and he joined the Navy when he was about 15 or 16.
• 15:07
  Sharon Stone: Which you can just imagine the life on a Navy ship for a 15 or 16 year old boy. So I thought my grandmother was like, pretty tough, pretty amazing. Pretty cool, that she pulled it all back together.
• 15:31
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about your grandfather. For a few minutes. We all have had in your case, you particularly had something very bad happened that influenced your life for a very long period of time when you're when you're nine years old. Your grandfather died and you were happy to see him Dad, can you talk
• 15:48
  Sharon Stone: 14 1414 Okay,
• 15:51
  Randall Kaplan: you're 14 When he died, what? And you were happy to see him that what had happened there? And can you talk about what you experienced and how that influenced you going forward?
• 16:04
  Sharon Stone: Yes, my grandfather was a pedophile. And of course, I have no real understanding of how that worked itself out with my mom and her sisters. Her sisters, all died in their early 60s and had incredible mental health issues.
• 16:30
  Sharon Stone: My mother was the only one that sustained and survived. He was a horrible broken creature, and extremely abusive to my grandmother, he beat her constantly, and beat her violently. And I had never seen death before my sister and I went to up to his coffin. And she asked me if he was really dead. And I didn't know. So she asked me to touch him to make sure he was dead. And so I poked him. And we realized he was dead. And we were, at the same time freaked out and thrilled that this horrible creature was done. But it's a terrible way for a child to process death for the first time. For it to be a great thing. But it was an awful experience and an awful day. And the whole situation of the funeral was not like a normal funeral where people sit down and grieve. It was a funeral where all the seats were empty, and everyone stood in the back of the room and tight little clusters, murmuring, and there was no service, no one spoke.
• 17:57
  Sharon Stone: And eventually everyone just kind of dwindled out the back.
• 18:02
  Sharon Stone: It was a nightmare.
• 18:09
  Randall Kaplan: being sexually assaulted is a very prevalent problem. I don't think many people know the status. I've been on the board of the National Center for Victims of Crime for almost two years. So I know some of the stats. One in five girls and one in 20. Boys are victims of child sexual abuse. Three out of four are victims from someone they know very well. And they typically don't report it because of shame. They're embarrassed, they may go to foster care, or they may go homeless. What's your advice to people listening to this? First of all,
• 18:42
  Sharon Stone: I'd like to comment on the stats. Okay. The stats are the stats of the people that have said so. Right.
• 18:52
  Sharon Stone: And right, and so the stats are grossly incorrect. Because there is so much trauma and shaming and gross misconduct around the behavior of people when you do say what's happened. And I can tell you just from releasing this book, that the conduct of people around me when I first started to try to discuss this in interviews, was so reprehensible that I had to take a couple of weeks off and balance myself just to so that I could understand that the people that were talking to me were triggered, and that many of the people that were talking to me, had never come to terms with their own abuse. And it took me some time off, to grow into this understanding, to grow into to the reality that the people that were being so either indifferent or aggressive or you know, cruel in their characterizations or terminology or peculiar or construct of the way they talk to me were triggered that they themselves had had some sort of abuse that they were unable to either access discuss, come to terms with, and so they were essentially taking it out on me.
• 20:40
  Sharon Stone: I didn't really understand in the first couple of weeks what was happening and I was I was being upset and triggered and, and panic respond. because I didn't really understand how much the fact that I had spoken about it with balance and confidence and, and longtime consideration had kind of freaked people out. So I took a couple of weeks off so that I could digest what had happened and be more calm and comfortable and also comforting in the way that I could respond to people simply because these statistics are so incorrect, I would say the truth of the matter is, it's more like four out of five people have dealt with this in one way or another. From, I would say, the misdemeanor level to the full blown violent felony level. And I don't think that even the misdemeanor level can be blown off, because if you haven't had someone to talk about it, too, it can fester and build and become quite frightening. And so I think that what really needs to happen is there has to become some sort of Truth and Reconciliation space, where people can speak without this kind of incorrect response.
• 22:16
  Sharon Stone: So that people can speak and knowledgeable calm, people can respond, where no consequences that all have to happen, where no action has to take place at all, where you can actually just say what happened. Or you can even say what you did. And nothing has to happen. So that you can say you committed us sexual, sexually inappropriate act. And just talk to somebody.
• 22:48
  Sharon Stone: I think we need these kinds of hotlines so that people can start to get to a point where they can even feel free to talk about things so they can even know, was this a wrong thing that I did? Or was this a wrong thing that happened to me? Or did I understand it correctly?
• 23:05
  Sharon Stone: Did I interpret it correctly?
• 23:10
  Sharon Stone: Certainly, in the case of date, rape, it is very hard for people to understand what happened, and what happened to them, and what happened in the to the person who committed it even. Because sometimes people do things and they don't realize what's happening to them in the moment.
• 23:27
  Sharon Stone: They're committing an inappropriate action. And so there needs to be more places for people to tell the truth and have reconciliation with themselves. Before they have to go tell someone where there are consequences to be taken against another person or consequences for themselves. Because it's too big and too many opinionated people start weighing in too quickly.
• 24:00
  Randall Kaplan: Let's go back to the happier part of your childhood. I want to talk about what you're like as a kid. And what did you do for fun?
• 24:12
  Sharon Stone: Well, I was a very precocious kid. Because I started walking and talking really, really early. And that was very frightening for my parents. I started painting and all kinds of things when I was really little. And so my parents started taking me to get all kinds of tests. I felt a little like a science experiment. So I started school really early. I started second grade when I was five. And that was really strange for the teachers. And the testers. Because you, you've got to remember this was like 1963. So I'm in second grade and 1963. And the teachers are like, you know, super freaked out. And I'm already writing in cursive and telling them like now I don't think that's correct. I'm that precocious kid who's like raising my hand constantly and telling the teacher? No, I think it's Edgar Allan Poe, you know, and the teacher just kind of had it with me. And so then they were like, Well, we think she has to go back to first grade.
• 25:41
  Sharon Stone: Because she doesn't have any social consciousness. She doesn't know how to behave. So basically, I think I was just too much of a pain in the ass.
• 25:53
  Sharon Stone: So about halfway through that first year, they put me in the chair attached to my desk and slid me down the hallway to first grade, where, of course, I was even less of a fit in because I was already halfway through second grade, and advanced. And so then they just started doing this thing where this was the era of lots of testing on kids. So the speed reading machine with the crank on the side came in, and then all of the test with the playing cards and fill out these tests and do this test and do this test. So basically, I became the guinea pig, of my school. So that's what I was doing as a kid, I was a guinea pig. And then, you know, by the time I got to fourth grade, they were doing these Mensa tests. And so I was put in this special program taken out of class with the rest of the kids, and there was a few of us and we were taken into. Because I was from such a small town, we were taken into the cafeteria, and we went to school in the cafeteria for three years. And we did all of those, you know, when the train leaves the station at this many miles per hour. And there's this many people on the train, or put all the states and all of their capitals in alphabetical order.
• 27:17
  Sharon Stone: And the real test wasn't the states, and they're capitals.
• 27:21
  Sharon Stone: But if you did the states and their capitals separately, you know, it was how you read the question, so and then if you won, you got the hula hoop or the gum or whatever, you know.
• 27:32
  Sharon Stone: So it was all this kind of competitive gameplay. And so then by the time I was in, I guess ninth grade, they started doing a whole lot of other kinds of testing. And then they brought people to the school to start to talk to me about the tests that I took. And then by 10th grade, I was going to college while I was going to high school. And then pretty soon after that I was just going to college while when I was I guess 16 or something.
• 28:17
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about one of the tests, you took a IQ test. IQ stands for intelligence quotient. And the tests are basically tools designed to measure your intellectual ability and potential and there's this general scale, it goes like this, the average score is 198% of the people taking the test score below 130.
• 28:34
  Randall Kaplan: If you get a 135 to 144, it says you're highly gifted. If you get a 145 to 154, the experts call you a genius. You had a 154, which means you're at the high end of the genius range. How old were you when you took that test? And you know what it meant?
• 28:54
  Sharon Stone: Well, I tested between 154 and 164, eight or something? I've taken a bunch of them. I mean, I've taken so many of them. But the first one, the first one was I think 158 I think 158 Maybe was the first one.
• 29:21
  Sharon Stone: But I was four? I think when I took that, or five? Well, I don't think anything of it when I took it because I was fine.
• 29:42
  Sharon Stone: No, what do I think of it nothing.
• 29:45
  Randall Kaplan: But later on, you must have at some point you kept taking these tests again.
• 29:48
  Randall Kaplan: And you knew you were intellectually gifted at some point. And finally
• 29:53
  Sharon Stone: I made my sister take them. Because this the ridiculous thing I thought was that I was the only one in the family getting them. Like what why don't test the rest of the kids. It's like it can't be just me. And ultimately, once we were grown, I've told my sister go online and take these tests. It can't be just me. It's ridiculous that they didn't test everybody else. And so she took it and she came off at like 145 or 147. And I was like see, it's not just me.
• 30:28
  Randall Kaplan: Let's forget the test. Let's go back to the plays in the driveway. When you're a kid I want to talk about fun.
• 30:34
  Randall Kaplan: And when you start thinking about your future, at what age tell us about the plays in the driveways and then at what age did you first think, Gosh, someday I want to be in the movie business.
• 30:47
  Sharon Stone: Well, I mean the place in the driveway became because I was obsessed Just with films, and I was that kid because on Saturday, we got all the old movies, you know, with the three channels, we got all these great old movies. And I was just obsessed with these movies. I mean, like my face was like four inches from the TV screen. So that was the first argument was there sitting too close to the TV, sit, you know, slide back, it was as though something was going to happen to me because I was too close to the television. And my father thought I was just insane.
• 31:21
  Sharon Stone: Because I didn't want to go outside and play. I wanted to see these movies constantly. And I didn't care if it was the black and white detective movies where they're like, we're gonna send you to Siberia. You know, I love that. Or beautiful, you know, I just love Barbara Stanwyck. And I thought her movies were so fabulous. And I loved you know, the dancing Fred Astaire movies, Gene Kelly, you know, I thought this was all so great. And then, and I really, I mean, I was just obsessed. And so I wanted to start doing these plays. And we had a two stall, garage and the front barn in the back thing. And so I set up the picnic table. So there was a bench in the front and the table, and then I put one of the benches on the picnic table. So I thought we had three tiers of bleacher seating. And then I would make the kids in the neighborhood and my sister be in the place. And I would use you know, whatever we had hanging around, you know, these fur hats and kitchen towels that I would sew into costumes, and you know, these Christmas lights and everything and make one stall one set and the other stole another set, and I would change these sets and put the doors garage doors up and down. And then I had this little record player that I would use little pieces of, you know, the beginning of a song or the middle of a song as my little, you know, seeing set change, you know, music so I could score my plays, you know, I had the whole thing going I just, you know, I was a full on director, producer making these plays. By the time I got to Los Angeles. Of course, I didn't realize that women weren't allowed to direct and produce until I got here. And I was like, Are you freaking kidding me? And I did basic instinct. And I went into the studio and I was like, you know, I would like to have like a really small amount of money to direct a movie. And they're like, Get out of here. And I'm like, No, but like we made this really big success. I just want a really small amount of money.
• 33:30
  Sharon Stone: Like a really small amount of money. I have an idea for a movie. And I really couldn't do this. And they're like, leave my office. I mean, it was like I was you know, coming in there and asking him if I could kill their executive staff. You know, they just thought I was nuts.
• 33:50
  Randall Kaplan: We're gonna come back to what you did with the quick and the dead a little bit later in the podcast. But I want to talk about when we think about how we get going and we start we all have jobs when we're a kid. You rode the mowed the lawn with the John Deere tractor when you were 10 you stripped and repainted the barn, you sold pots and pans door
• 34:12
  Sharon Stone: to door Christmas cards door to door.
• 34:16
  Randall Kaplan: Bob's Bob's Big Boy bus girl and waitress, McDonald's. You know, I think you hit three things there, the fry girl, the shake girl, four things a pie girl and the counter girl, pool hall and college short order cook, waitress and manager of a fancy restaurant at Holiday Inn. These jobs I mean, these are great, they build character and we need we need to do them. I was a waiter at the Olive Garden. When I was in college, I bagged groceries at the Kroger, my senior year of high school.
• 34:46
  Randall Kaplan: These are great jobs to have the great character building jobs.
• 34:50
  Randall Kaplan: What did you learn? What did you learn from these jobs? And how much of a foundation did they set for your future?
• 35:02
  Sharon Stone: Well, life is a service job. You know, it's the way that it is it doesn't matter where you work, you got to show up on time you got to have your self together and you got to move it you know, and the more you move it the better you do the more money you wait make the the the more you please your supervisor the more you're gonna get promoted, you know, the less you lip off the better you're going to do the more you suck it up and do more than your own job the more you're gonna get promoted
• 35:36
  Randall Kaplan: What was your favorite of all those jobs?
• 35:42
  Sharon Stone: I guess I have two favorites. I I loved running the pool hall. I really loved running the pool hall because being I'd liked being the short order cook I really enjoyed that because I liked talking to the people who came in late at night. And I really liked learning to play pool. And I liked that feeling that like, This is my place, and you have to keep it together to be in here, I'll throw you out. I also really liked when I became the late night manager of the Holiday Inn in my college town, because the acts that came through to play at the college had to stay at the Holiday Inn, it was the only place to really stay. And so I would get to meet that the headliners they would come in after the show. And I would save food and keep the bar open for them. And so I got to meet really, really interesting musicians. And then the priest from the town would come in and drink at the bar late at night.
• 36:47
  Sharon Stone: And I would get to sit and talk with him. And I have found Throughout my travels all over the world that the theologians no matter what faith are always the most highly educated and interesting people to sit and talk to at the end of the night.
• 37:07
  Randall Kaplan: I want to switch gears for a second and talk about work ethic, which I think is the single most important determinant of our success. Who taught you the meaning of work ethic? And how old? were you when you actually took notice of that? Were you thinking I can't wait to be successful one day, I can't wait to get going. But I really need this. And as part of the answer. Can you tell us what a swing shift is?
• 37:32
  Sharon Stone: Well, my dad was the hardest working guy. Ever.
• 37:40
  Sharon Stone: And you know, in the movie business, we really work hard.
• 37:45
  Sharon Stone: And my dad worked. When we were young, my dad worked swing shift and swing shift sucks, you work first shift one week, which is, you know, your nine to five, or depending on the company seven to three, it depends on how they run it. Second shift is you know that one that's kind of like 11 to seven. And third shift is when you work nights. And my dad worked swing shift, which means you work first shift one week, second shift the next week, third shift the next week and you keep switching, you keep switching shifts, which means you're exhausted, you're always exhausted, and you never see your family. Because, you know, you're always just fried and my dad worked an hour away from where we lived. And so he was driving constantly working constantly. And he worked in a factory. And he worked in a factory where he picked up steel blocks. And they put a blueprint on top of the steel block. And then he cut the dye that's now laser cut. But he cut the dye, the precision cut into the dye for machine parts, gun parts, car parts, everything the original dye that would make all the pieces that went in your car engine, all the pieces that went in tanks, all the pieces that went in guns, my dad made the original dye for all of that.
• 39:29
  Sharon Stone: And so when laser started, the big companies came to find my dad to teach them how to make the original dyes. And so my dad was quite a cool dude. And my dad brought up there was a company in Mexico that wanted my dad to train their employees how to do this. And so my dad brought these three Mexican guys up to treat them, teach them how to do this. And there was such racial prejudice in the factory that people were very upset that my dad had brought these Mexican guys up. And my dad made a clear statement that if anybody in the company didn't like it, they could quit their job and he would hire these Mexican guys to take their jobs. My dad was so anti racism so hardcore against this and wouldn't permit it in any way, shape or form. He was really great. And he was also a feminist, which was really crazy in his period to be so hardcore about feminism, but my dad hired the first woman dye sinker which really sent the men sideways or I got to hand it to Joe. He he was quite the forerunner of bringing in people of color and women into a factory business where no one would hire women.
• 41:07
  Randall Kaplan: So that's a good transition. He was a great role model on the work ethic front.
• 41:11
  Randall Kaplan: At some point, you're going to start your professional career.
• 41:15
  Randall Kaplan: Most people wait till they graduated college till they graduate college to start the career. years got going during college your uncle gave you $100 To enter a local beauty contest.
• 41:24
  Randall Kaplan: If you want you got the money to help you pay for college. Yeah, you didn't win. But a judge noticed you encourage you to join. I love the name of this one, the Miss Crawford County contest and you did win that one. And it kick started your modeling career? How old? Were you at the time? And at this point? Were you thinking you wanted to be a model? Or were you thinking I'm going to try modeling and this will be a good segue into acting one day.
• 41:50
  Sharon Stone: I was I think seven teen when I was Miss Crawford County and part of your responsibility is to represent your county in the Miss Pennsylvania pageant. And I was such a heck, I went to miss Pennsylvania. And, you know, those girls that enter the big, you know, state pageants are very, very trained, and very, very professional. And sometimes they enter the pageants 456 times because they want to be Miss America. I mean, they're really working towards being Miss Pennsylvania. I had one Miss Crawford County, frankly, I think as a fluke. And there I was in Miss Pennsylvania, and I didn't know my ass from my elbow, you know. And I had picked a dress for my evening gown. That was, I think quite unlike the other girls dresses were quite beautiful and had the gigantic full ball skirts. And, you know, we're very, I think beauty pageants, style of dresses, and I picked a dress, it was like a white sheath dress, quite tailored down very plain. And it came with a white cape, which, of course the people told me you know, you're not gonna wear that in the pageant, you'll just wear this plain, very plain white dress, which is still very much my style. And but when I saw all the girls in their sort of big, beautiful, sparkly, fabulous beauty pageant dresses, I was like, oh my god, I so don't have a clue what I'm doing. And you know, you're supposed to gracefully walk down the runway, make a three point turn, smile and nod to the judges, you know, do the whole thing and then gracefully come back up, take your place stand in a very particular way. And I just thought, I'm originally never going to win this. This is ridiculous. I am so out of place. So I put the cape on and went down the runway really fast. So the cape would fly. And then I just did a big spin. So the cape was swoosh out in the back and kind of stopped like, and that's it. And then went back. And at the end, several of the judges talked to my parents and said, You know what, she's not a beauty pageant girl. But she is a model. And she should go to New York and model because she's great on the runway. I was like, oh, so
• 44:34
  Randall Kaplan: that leads us to one of the great stories of your career. Let's talk about your mom and her TV habits and The Merv Griffin Show and the yellow pages in the art of cold calling.
• 44:50
  Sharon Stone: Well, when they finally decided that I could go to New York my mom had seen Eileen Ford on the Merv Griffin Show. Benches shows you how long ago it was. So she looked up, Eileen Ford's was the Ford modeling agency, which was of course the biggest thing then said that we could go to New York actually, we went to New Jersey. And it stayed with my aunt Gert, who was still alive and took the bus into New York and wandered around like the hex that we were and found the Ford agency and just walked in. And God bless Eileen Ford, she saw me said that she would like to throw me down their flight of stairs and bounce the fat off my ass. Now, I was not really Fat, you know, I was like a pretty normal size kid, you know, like a regular size kid, but you don't get to be a regular size kid. And of course then when it was probably, I'm guessing it had to have been like 1978 or 79. You know, when it was like, the girls were skinny. I mean, Pat Cleveland was the top runway model, you know. And this was right. I mean, these were the exact days when Jerry Hall and her friend had met Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards, because when I walked into Eileen Ford that day, that's all they were talking about, is the Jerry and her friend had gone out with Mick and Keith. So this was before they married them before anything, they had just met those. And so this was their big modeling period. So these girls were, you know, 511, and you know, 22 pounds. So, I probably look like a ball of dough, walking in there. And, ya know,
• 47:05
  Randall Kaplan: what you did is amazing. And I really want to focus on this for a minute, because it's huge for those listening in Washington today, you're 21 years old, you head off to New York City, and you're going to walk into one of the most successful famous modeling agencies in the world without an appointment, basically show off say, Hey, there, I'm Sharon, and I like to meet with Eileen Ford.
• 47:24
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, there's a lot of people listening in Washington today who may be thinking of a really bold idea, but they're really afraid to go for it. They're really afraid to try it. They're thinking in a million years, there's a negative 0% chance of this ever happening. What's
• 47:42
  Sharon Stone: gonna happen is with no, if you end up with no so what, but you don't try you're never gonna get a yes.
• 47:51
  Randall Kaplan: Good. So that's so say it again. What What should people do when the odds are one in a billion?
• 47:59
  Sharon Stone: Go get it. Go get it. I mean, my dad had esophageal cancer, they gave him a 3% chance of living three months. We tortured my father, we told him to wash the car in his tuxedo, so he could get some wear out of it. And my dad beat esophageal cancer. Who has who beats a 3% chance of even making it three months, who beats it and lives, the people who want to the people who say they're going to the people who say, I'm not doing that. I'm not dying.
• 48:33
  Sharon Stone: The people who decide to win, that's who wins the people who choose to win. That's who wins.
• 48:45
  Sharon Stone: The people who go in and say, I'm going to do this. She's going to throw me down the flight of stairs and bounce the fat off my ass. Well, guess what I wish someone would, because I want to win. If that's what it takes. Let's do it. I'll stand at the top you push.
• 49:02
  Randall Kaplan: When I was 26, I was very unhappy lawyer. I want to get out of the law. And I had an idea I was gonna write letters to CEOs of big companies asking for meetings. And everyone said Phil are never going to meet with you. I wrote 300 letters I got at meetings.
• 49:15
  Randall Kaplan: Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney Sumner Redstone, who was started Viacom. These are themes of In Search of Excellence, the one of the things is believing yourself, anything is possible.
• 49:29
  Randall Kaplan: So I love your story. For those listening.
• 49:34
  Sharon Stone: Thank you say please. And thank you to everyone who gives you an opportunity. Call them Mr. And Mrs. Don't think you can waltz in there and start calling people by their first names.
• 49:45
  Sharon Stone: Don't think that people don't remember if you don't say thank you. Or please, it is really important to acknowledge people and let them know that it means something that they had a minute for you.
• 50:02
  Randall Kaplan: handwrite, a thank you note.
• 50:05
  Sharon Stone: I hand wrote thank you notes to every single cast and crew member of all my films for as long as I could, until my career got so overwhelming that I couldn't. And there were 200 300 people on every film set. And I got every every handwritten note to everybody as long as I could.
• 50:26
  Randall Kaplan: And I'm sure every single person who received one of your notes is still talking about it today when your name comes up in a conversation.
• 50:31
  Randall Kaplan: And again, that's just it's great advice. It's great form.
• 50:37
  Sharon Stone: And still now I tried to come up with some kind of crew gift so that everybody gets something from me. I want some I want everyone to know that. I see you. I see your dragon cable. I see You're out here in the cold in the wet. I see the hard work you're doing on behalf of this film. I get that you're there, I get that you're working.
• 51:06
  Randall Kaplan: See, you're a successful model. Now for a few years, you're traveling all over the world, you have some great clients, you're earning a pretty good living. And then you say to yourself, I really want to be an actor. So you go to Hollywood one day, and you say, I'm doing that too. So you move to Los Angeles. Well, first, I
• 51:22
  Sharon Stone: stood in line in New York and got cast as extras in movies. And once I started getting a little bit of traction like that, I thought, I better move. I'm getting just a little bit of movement. I'm gonna move.
• 51:36
  Randall Kaplan: Okay, so you go to Hollywood. How old were you walk us through it. Your first audition how you got it? How many you had before you landed the the extra role in the Woody Allen movie. And then as part of the story, tell us about Mr.
• 51:54
  Randall Kaplan: cheapo and how he ended up not only being cheap, but how his recommendation really changed in life forever.
• 52:03
  Sharon Stone: Well, I worked with Woody, I've worked with Woody on several movies. I think by now I've worked with him on at least three. At least three movies, if not four. But the first one, I was still modeling in New York when I got cast to be in start us memories. And he was so nice to me. And Gordon Willis was shooting star us memories. And I'm sure you you know, he shot all the Godfather movies and great, great films.
• 52:38
  Sharon Stone: me he's just a great, great cinematographer. And they said, Oh, you know, you really have something. And we had just cast you for a few days. But we keep you on the set for a few weeks.
• 52:51
  Sharon Stone: If you want to stay, we think you have it. And, of course, I'd love to stay. So I stayed. And that really helped me and then the first assistant director on that show Michael Pizer called me in for two more jobs. And so that's how I got kicked off into working. Then I moved to Los Angeles. And I worked around I did little jobs, I worked on some TV shows some that didn't didn't work. You know. And I went through, you know, a variety of different things, then I think Basic Instinct was my 13th film 12th or 13th film, no 18th, maybe 18th film that I done. And I was having a hard time getting seen, even getting brought in because they were really, they were looking for someone who you know, equated Michael stature, obviously, which I certainly did not. But I had done Total Recall with Arnold. And that had been very successful, though I wasn't, of course, in any position equal to Arnold either. But I did, it was the same director and I did get finally get the opportunity to test. That was a big breakthrough for me that opportunity to test. And once I got that opportunity to test, I think it took seven or eight months to get cast. Once that happened, then the ball started really rolling for me.
• 54:37
  Randall Kaplan: Your manager broke into the casting directors office to get the script and credit card 12 People 12 accesses passed on the part before you had a chance to go in and read for the part. And as you said, Michael said, I'm not going to read with Sharon Stone I want to read with someone bigger. So how how did you actually get the test which is online, which I saw which is pretty cool to watch. But how did it actually come about? Was that the manager that set that up? And were you really saying yourself? You're 32 years old at the time, which is sad is is that's on the older side for a woman wanting to break in as
• 55:24
  Sharon Stone: the way out and if you don't get something by then you're done right. I just said to my agent, you know, if I don't get this part, I'm gonna be done. But if you get me in the room, I'm gonna get the part. I promise you this. This part is mine. Because I really understood that this part was so much more than the nudity. It was such a complex and difficult called character to break down and create to produce this part because the part was so complicated. And then the part had to appear to be so uncomplicated that to me, it really reminded me of the way Fred Astaire danced. It was like Fred Astaire made dancing look like it was nothing. But he rehearsed eight hours a day, it was going to be that kind of thing where you were going to have to kill yourself to do it.
• 56:24
  Sharon Stone: But it had to look like you were just breathing. And it was really hard. I mean, I had horrendous nightmares. I was sleepwalking while I was doing it. I was, you know, just freaked out half the time, but it came off so smooth. And that was, that was for me the my goal, I achieved my goal. But then everybody thought I was like the character, which, you know, upside downside?
• 57:03
  Randall Kaplan: Well, for those people who don't know, who are listening, and watching, Basic Instinct is an erotic thriller starring Michael Douglas, who was in one of the biggest if not the biggest male movie star in the world. He plays a San Francisco detective who's investigating the murder of a rock star. And during the investigation, he becomes involved in a relationship with prime suspect, Catherine Tramel, which you are playing. And at some point, he's interviewing you, as a suspect, in what has become one of the most famous scenes in movie history. Can you talk about the before the during and the after that scene and the controversy and your thoughts about it?
• 57:47
  Sharon Stone: Well, I'm really kind of tucked out on it, frankly. And I wrote about it in the book. And so I'm kind of like, you know what, you can buy the book. It's available at all bookstores near you the beauty of living twice,
• 58:00
  Randall Kaplan: and it's great, and it's great. Okay, well, we'll skip over the scene. But but the movies, the movies, a huge success if you're going to and $53 million at the Bach box office back then. And today, that's the equivalent of $666 million in today's dollars. And the critics Pandit, by the way, but you had the last laugh on that one, you had the Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. So you're probably thinking Fu and that happened.
• 58:28
  Randall Kaplan: And then casino comes two years later, and that that really put you on the map. Directed by the great Martin Scorsese, you played Robert De Niro's wife.
• 58:44
  Randall Kaplan: This time, you're not only nominated for the Golden Globe, but you when you when you get a Academy Award nomination. What was that? Like? I mean, here, you've got back to back, massive hits. And your acting coach said you at one point, something about Robert De Niro. So talk to me about all that and how good that one felt.
• 59:09
  Sharon Stone: You know, it was my goal to he said to me, at one point, what's your goal here.
• 59:13
  Sharon Stone: And I said, my goal is to be able to sit down opposite Robert De Niro and hold my own. That was my acting goal. I mean to me. Of course, I've done a lot of action movies, I've done a lot of everything, but just to sit face to face with the most I would say nonreactive actor, the actor who is the most focused and determined actor who doesn't just flippantly react to everybody, you know what I mean?
• 59:53
  Sharon Stone: He's very thoughtful about his performance. And when I, you know, auditioned for the part, he said, you know, my performance depends on you. This is a very different kind of part. This character is very much his whole behavior is affected by what she does. And I have to count on you. And I have to, you have to promise me that you're going to deliver that.
• 1:00:27
  Sharon Stone: And, you know, when you have someone like that, say that to you, for me, because I am. I'm a person that really takes direction. Like if you tell me, you know, stand on your head and fart the national anthem, I'm gonna figure out how to do that.
• 1:00:45
  Sharon Stone: You know what I mean? I'm not gonna go oh, I don't you know, I'm the person that's like, oh, wow, how do I have fit, how do I figure that out? You know, so with, with Bob, I mean, it was everything to me. Just everything that I absolutely delivered everything that he needed, and everything that was needed for the film. And that my focus was, you know, 100% every single second. And I really pushed Marty. I pushed him and followed him around. He told me I was like a terrier on the back of his pant leg, you know, until he finally just turned around one day, and it was like, What do you want? And I was like, I want you to treat me like you treat. You know, Marty, and, and Jimmy and Joey, I want you to come in my trailer in the morning and tell me exactly what you want. I want you to push me to your break me. You know, I want you to get everything out of me you can possibly get, that's what I want. And he's like, really? And I'm like, Yes, really? That's really what I want. And he's like, and then he just kind of looked at me. Like, I didn't really realize that you were up for it. And I'm like, yeah, and he goes, well, then I'll be in your trailer in the morning. And I was like, Okay, how do you take your coffee. And he told me, and I'm like, okay, and like, so that night, I went home, and I knew he was ate a particular way and what he ate and didn't eat. And so I baked what he liked in the morning, and I started baking, what he likes so that he would want to come to my hair and makeup trailer because I would have what he liked for breakfast ready. Because I was going to get Marty Scorsese and my damn trailer, whatever it took, because I was going to make sure that he was going to see me and push me and direct me if I had to stay up half the night baking, whatever it took. So I got him in my makeup trailer.
• 1:03:02
  Sharon Stone: And I got him to talk to me. And I got him to tell me like his most magnificent dreams for the character so that I could deliver them.
• 1:03:13
  Randall Kaplan: And so you work so hard, doing so many movies up to that point, I think at that point, you had done something like 30 movies, you get Basic Instinct, and you do Cassina two years later, and you're working with one of the best movie casts ever one of the best director ever.
• 1:03:32
  Sharon Stone: And that's the best editor ever. And and the first listen to score best score ever.
• 1:03:42
  Randall Kaplan: One of the best movies ever. By the way, let's just we'll we'll call it like it is it was one of the best movies of all time. You did a great job in that. But the there's a message there to people listening and watching this today, which is you never rested on your laurels. You didn't just sit there and say I'm here. All right. I belong and I'm going to do this here you are you're, you're proactively asking the best of the best of the best.
• 1:04:06
  Randall Kaplan: How do you make me better tell me how to get the most
• 1:04:11
  Sharon Stone: I got in the town I got in the building, but I had to get in the, in the room, you know what I mean? You You have to understand that like, I'm not Hollywood royalty, you know, I'm not from here. And I'm not part of the machine. And then let's face it, I'm Irish, still. So still an outsider. And so you just keep having to break through all the barriers. And then you have to keep proving yourself. And when you're pretty again, you're you know, probably stupid, and you're probably a jerk, and you're probably inconsistent, and you're probably a diva. And you're probably unprofessional. And you're probably mean to people and you know, so you go into every job not not even once you're established that that's not who you are every single job you have to go through this all over again. And someone who doesn't get acknowledged will continue to say that's how you are, you are someone that you didn't have time to deal with because you were too busy being professional, you know, there's always going to be these things.
• 1:05:29
  Sharon Stone: So you know, it's a constant.
• 1:05:29
  Sharon Stone: And I know some of the biggest movie stars in the world and they're 75 thing I still gotta get in there and fight for it.
• 1:05:38
  Sharon Stone: It's it's nothing's a given.
• 1:05:43
  Sharon Stone: Nothing ever is a given.
• 1:05:47
  Randall Kaplan: We're going to go quickly through your career and then I want to move on to a whole bunch of other topics I quickly want to mention the quick and the dead. Which finally was your first producer role in 1995. And there's a story here that not a lot of people know about. You wanted Russell Crowe to be in this movie. And the studio said No fucking way that's happening.
• 1:06:10
  Randall Kaplan: Some unknown Australian actor that no one has ever heard of you put your foot down.
• 1:06:17
  Sharon Stone: Sheeran, he played a skinhead, Australian movie, what makes you think he's such a great actor. And I'm like, he's the Richard Burton of our times.
• 1:06:27
  Sharon Stone: You're just not seeing him.
• 1:06:31
  Sharon Stone: You're not seeing him. As an artist, you're seeing only his performance. You're not really seeing him. He's, he's Richard Burton, you have to see who he is what he's gonna bring. He brings a different type of masculinity than we're used to at this time. In film. He brings this very rough, raw, yet weirdly sophisticated masculinity to film. This is very unusual what he's got. It's very special. I promise you it's very special.
• 1:07:10
  Randall Kaplan: Oh, well. Well, they said no way. You said Yes way. You put
• 1:07:14
  Sharon Stone: and we had to wait two weeks to get him which was really making people so mad at me.
• 1:07:20
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, but you use your own money to pay for a salary to get for him. I use Oh, new for Leo. For Leo. Okay. For Leo. Okay,
• 1:07:29
  Sharon Stone: Leo, they were like, you know, we'd seen everybody. And we saw really good people. But Leo came in with a sort of vulnerability, that because this is a kid, right? This is a kid who's just at the edge of his manhood. He wants to be a man. He's a kid who wants to be a man. And he wants his dad to acknowledge him so much. And his dad's a bad guy. So of course, he doesn't acknowledge him. Of course, he won't acknowledge him and let him be a man. He won't introduce him to his manhood. Because bad guys, don't let their sons become men. That is the absolute thing that bad guys won't do.
• 1:08:19
  Sharon Stone: Bad guys suppress their son's masculinity. That's the number one trait of a bad guy. So when Leo came in, and he had to audition for the death scene, and of course, Gene Hackman is being so mean to him, and Leo is auditioning and crying, and wanting his dad's love so much.
• 1:08:41
  Sharon Stone: And he was the only one of these young men who was willing to show this profound vulnerability and need for his dad at even in this last moment to let him be a man. And it touched me so deeply. And I was like, this is the kid. And he's not just the kid for this movie. He's the kid because he's a star. Because only a star is willing to show themselves in this way, in this way, where they will let you all the way in to their soul. And it was so clear to me that like, this kid, is a gigantic superstar. He has something that is so rare. It's so so rare. And said to me, really, if you want him so much pay him yourself.
• 1:09:39
  Randall Kaplan: Well, I mean, who does that? But the answer is you did that. And Russell
• 1:09:43
  Sharon Stone: Chris, I was like, You know what I want more than I want money. I want a really good movie. I will surely go forever.
• 1:09:52
  Sharon Stone: And then by the time we got to the soundtrack, because I had, I had hired Sam Raimi, who had only done, you know, those movies where the guy with the chainsaw falls through time, which I thought were like a stroke of genius. But they were like, Why do you want this D movie director share and you're always shooting yourself in the foot. And I'm like, because he's a genius. And so they were really they were so fed up with me. And then of course, Sam went on to make spider man their highest grossing film they'd ever had as his next film. But they still were mad at me just because I guess I was a woman with ideas which, you know.
• 1:10:33
  Randall Kaplan: Sam went on to do Spider Man, Leonardo DiCaprio went on to become one of the greatest actors of all time, and Russell Crowe is not so bad.
• 1:10:39
  Randall Kaplan: Three
• 1:10:42
  Sharon Stone: factor going on being Richard Burton. And
• 1:10:45
  Randall Kaplan: he tells everyone he owes his entire career to you. So it's always great to acknowledge the people who who who got Aren't you there but we have to talk about all
• 1:10:54
  Sharon Stone: just there are so magnificent and I got to be in a movie with Leo Russell, Gene Hackman, Sam Raimi directing, me producing, and still people won't give me any money.
• 1:11:13
  Randall Kaplan: We're gonna we're gonna move forward on the career we have so much more to cover. But I want to ask first the question, do you have a bucket list of things you want to do before the end of your life?
• 1:11:25
  Sharon Stone: I want to go to the Galapagos. I want to see those giant turtles and penguins. And I want to see that I'm very intrigued by that.
• 1:11:37
  Randall Kaplan: Okay, well, I have a bucket list and one of my goals while there are a bunch of things, but one of them was to be in a major motion picture. So now we need to talk about one of the best movies you've ever done named Alpha Dog. I don't know if you remember that in your last year his career, but
• 1:11:56
  Sharon Stone: I'm a hockey getting that guy.
• 1:11:59
  Randall Kaplan: Well, I'm, I'm a hockey director. That's pretty much what happened. I'm from Detroit. I love hockey. I'm friends with some of the guys who play and the former the owner of the Los Angeles Kings at the time, Bruce Bucknell owned a movie studio, which was going bankrupt, and he didn't have the cash. He owned the Kings hockey team, who was trying to sell the kings to Sony but he basically created false invoices for the Coin Company that he owned to take out a loan, falsifying the collateral got caught, went to prison, the team was sold. And Bruce knew everyone in the movie business.
• 1:12:41
  Randall Kaplan: People really liked them. When he went to jail, people like them. And my hockey player friend said, You got to meet Bruce, when he comes out of prison. I'm a hockey fan, and I like movies. And we became friends. And one night I was at dinner with Bruce and his girlfriend and my ex wife. Were at Tuscana in Brentwood. And I said, Bruce, what are you up to?
• 1:13:00
  Randall Kaplan: And he says, I'm just producing this movie with Sharon Stone and Bruce Willis and Justin Timberlake. And I said, Why aren't I in that movie? Haha. I went out to go to the bathroom.
• 1:13:10
  Randall Kaplan: I come back to the table. And Bruce says you have a casting call at one o'clock. And I said, Yeah, right. And my ex wife looks to me. It said, You really do. He really called the casting agent when he went to the bathroom. And I said, Okay, whatever. So I go to this casting office somewhere in Beverly Hills, we have a one o'clock. It's at one o'clock I go there. There's all these young kids there with scripts with CAA, William Morris on the cover their pace around very nervously, and they're running late. And I'm sitting there thinking, God, it's one o'clock and then 15 minutes late.
• 1:13:41
  Randall Kaplan: There's got three guys to go. I think I may leave, I gotta get back to work. But I stayed and I go on. I meet with a casting director who I was in talking to him for like three minutes. Nick Cassavetes, walked in Cassavetes walked in. He had just come off the notebook. He was a big deal.
• 1:13:56
  Randall Kaplan: At the time, this was his next movie. And he says, you're a fan of Bruce. Yeah, you like hockey?
• 1:14:03
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah. You want to be in the movie? Yeah. I said, Okay.
• 1:14:06
  Randall Kaplan: You're in the movie. And I said, just like that said, just like that. Said, Okay. Well, what do I do? He said, We'll be in touch with you. So a couple of days before the scene, which I was in was shot and receita at a house in a neighborhood. He said, Come find me. And I'll tell you what to do. Meanwhile, I'd never seen the script. I'd never read the script. I vaguely knew the story. The story was about Jesse James Hollywood, who was the middle class, teenage drug dealer from the valley whose teenage brother was kidnapped and then later murdered. And they needed a police officer to take a missing person report. So I was a police officer. I went, didn't know where I was got into a police uniform. I had a gun.
• 1:14:52
  Randall Kaplan: They said make sure the gun never leaves the holster. And then they said, Come find me on the set. And I'm walking around like, where am I right now? I see Nick, there's 30 people around Nick in the neighborhood.
• 1:15:07
  Randall Kaplan: I'm afraid to even go up to him.
• 1:15:07
  Randall Kaplan: And I said, Excuse me, excuse me, it looks at me, sort of like, who are you? And I said, Oh, Randy, Bruce McDonald's friend. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right.
• 1:15:16
  Randall Kaplan: And he said, Okay, come here.
• 1:15:16
  Randall Kaplan: And he said, Do you have something to write with? I said, No. And he just shouted out to know on pen and paper and someone gives them a pen and paper. He calls over a police officer. He said, Okay, what would you say if you're taking a missing person report? They said name, date of birth, social.
• 1:15:34
  Randall Kaplan: What were your last wearing? I'm furiously writing these down. So Okay, we're done with that. And they said, Okay, go into the house right now and I'll be there at some point. Didn't tell me when I get into this house and there's it's basically a family room. That's a family room. And there's 20 microphones ceiling, and there's people sitting on the couch, they have name tags. I'm on the loveseat next to the couch. So you have a couch and then the seat, I'm on the seat. And all these people have these name tags on I'm sitting there 40 minutes saying nothing chit chatting with the people next to me. I finally get up. I went to the guy in charge.
• 1:16:15
  Randall Kaplan: I said, Excuse me. I am missing a nametag and they said, Oh, no, no, no, you're in the movie. And I said, Okay. And I went back, I sat down, I had no idea what even that meant. I was too embarrassed to ask the question.
• 1:16:26
  Randall Kaplan: And there for another half an hour. And they said, Okay, first team. So I see everyone get up and looking around, and then you sit down, right right next to me. And I'm thinking, Okay,
• 1:16:38
  Sharon Stone: I think I get it and had black hair.
• 1:16:41
  Randall Kaplan: I Well, the uniform was, they certainly didn't fit it to my specs. I got to this trailer. And they said Put this on. So it was a little bulky. But if you go back and watch the movie, and I can send you a screenshot of because of black hair, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not black, but darker brown here. Definitely not. No white here. Right. So I don't know if you remember what happened. Remember, but But you know, you sat down and you said nothing to me. And I was intimidated, of course. And I kept thinking to myself, my boys back in Detroit would have wouldn't believe where I am right now sitting here and Sharon Stone sitting next to me.
• 1:17:23
  Randall Kaplan: And so I'm thinking, do I say hi to her? I said yeah, you know, I want to say hi to I want to just before I said she's me. Hi, Sharon. I'm Randy said, Oh, hi.
• 1:17:30
  Randall Kaplan: Nice to meet you. And you were just in the zone. You went right back into the zone. No chit chat there whatsoever. And then Nick comes in. Okay, you ready?
• 1:17:39
  Randall Kaplan: Ready? Action. Okay, so I've never acted in the play. I've never been on a movie set before. Everyone's looking at me. And I'm reading I said, Okay, Randy, read your lines.
• 1:17:52
  Randall Kaplan: And name, date of birth, social.
• 1:17:52
  Randall Kaplan: Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
• 1:17:58
  Randall Kaplan: Cut. What's up? You didn't let Sharon go. I said, Oh, okay. So the next thing I know, action, and you're sitting I mean, we're three feet apart. And you're leaning forward, I could see your face contorting. And, like I wanted to reach out to you and interrupt you. Like, come on, like, what are you going to say?
• 1:18:21
  Randall Kaplan: And you just blurt it out to me.
• 1:18:21
  Randall Kaplan: Fine. Bye, son. I'm sitting there thinking. Like someone just hit me in the head with a hammer. And we had to stop twice because of me because he said no, no, no, wait, wait for her to answer name, date of birth, social. And I'm thinking I got one more shot. And then I'm out of here. Sharon's getting pissed off. This is not going well. My bucket list is about to die at a slowing torture death here. And finally, like the third one, and the fourth one went, Okay. And then Nick comes over to me. And he says any, you know, whispers in the air. I mean, this is all new to me. And at this point, it's sort of fun. And he says, Do you have the ability to piss people off? And I said what? You said, Yeah, you know, can you piss people off? And I said, Yeah, you just ask anybody that I know. And I'll tell you, I convince people off. And he said, I want you to forget that Sharon Stone right now. I want you to piss her off. I'm looking at what I want you to piss her.
• 1:19:27
  Randall Kaplan: I want you to be an asshole cop.
• 1:19:27
  Randall Kaplan: I want you to interrupt her. I want her I want you to cut her off. I just want you to make her mad said okay. So I think I think we did this for about 20 minutes. I got my bucket list. I thank you for being a part of that. I thank you for not kicking me off of the set and saying, you know, get this guy out of here. And I have to say, I don't like to brag about my residual check. But I did earn$4.31 last year for my for my residual swing. I am almost at a couple of years or probably a little north of mine. But but that's when we met for the first time back in 2005. So we've known each other a while. Not that well, now. I am I'm an actor, I
• 1:20:17
  Sharon Stone: checked actor and you've learned the improv situation.
• 1:20:20
  Randall Kaplan: I checked that off the list. It's funny because I'll tell you a funny story about this. We were in baby group at the time. I had young kids at the time. And there's a director who is in the baby group, a well known TV director, and I'm not going to mention his name. He was recently married.
• 1:20:38
  Randall Kaplan: Few years ago, they had a child.
• 1:20:38
  Randall Kaplan: That's how we knew that we were good friends. And I tell them about this whole thing. And he said that's unbelievable to me.
• 1:20:44
  Randall Kaplan: He said only in Hollywood and he said you know what I'm writing this series and There's a part for you that want you to audition for. And I said, you know, Gil, I have my own company and and I have a full time job.
• 1:21:02
  Randall Kaplan: But, you know, it'd be kind of cool. You know, tell me more about it. His wife went completely crazy. They she was a makeup artists on a set they met they had a child they got married. I've never seen a couple yell it. I've never seen a woman yell at her husband more than I did that day. I've been asking you for four years to put me in one of your shows. This guy doesn't even want to be an actor. He doesn't need to be an actor. And here you're offering to get a role in your your TV show. Are you out of your mind?
• 1:21:36
  Randall Kaplan: I this show didn't get picked up I never read for you. They are they are divorced. And it was a very bad divorce. But it had nothing to do with with that conversation. You say? So So I say, Let's we're gonna come to your challenges and the over the amazing things that you had to do to come back to where you are. But first, I want to talk about your rich and famous.
• 1:22:04
  Randall Kaplan: You're one of the biggest movie stars and
• 1:22:09
  Sharon Stone: nobody's rich anymore, honey.
• 1:22:11
  Randall Kaplan: Well, this was pre.com. This is pre.com You're doing pretty well at the time.
• 1:22:16
  Randall Kaplan: You're gorgeous. You're rich, you're a mega global superstar.
• 1:22:19
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, that's everybody's dream. At some point. That's your dream. What was it like when it happened? And there's a whole nother side to this too.
• 1:22:29
  Randall Kaplan: There's the flip side of man, I really can't go to the grocery store. Be a normal person first
• 1:22:35
  Sharon Stone: happens. It's It's so fantastic. You're like, Oh my God. It's finally happened. Do you know I am famous. I'm the movie star. Everybody loves me.
• 1:22:46
  Sharon Stone: Oh my god. This is amazing. I can get a seat at any restaurant. I can get tickets to any show i Oh my god, I can call anyone on the phone. Oh, this is unbelievable. And then it doesn't go away. And it's horrible. It's the most horrifying awful thing that ever happened because you can't go out of your house and you can't get in your car and go for a drive. And you can't just drive over to your friend's house and your friends can't drive over to your house because they can't get in. And you know, there's no going for a walk and your life as you formerly had it is over.
• 1:23:32
  Sharon Stone: And it's not fun at all. It's a freaking nightmare. That doesn't go away. And I joke that it's like Justin Bieber's love. Only song. Because it is it's just awful. It's awful to be famous.
• 1:23:51
  Sharon Stone: Nobody everybody thinks they want it and add slices.
• 1:23:54
  Sharon Stone: Everybody thinks they want it until they get it. It goes. He says it actually his joke is it's like VD everybody wants to get next to you till they see what they get.
• 1:24:06
  Randall Kaplan: And there's some other things to think about, too. I mean, you had stalkers outside your house, I think to within a year period. I live in a neighborhood you live in a neighborhood where there's there's lots of well known people. I mean, we live in Los Angeles. So this is the home of movie stars, but
• 1:24:26
  Sharon Stone: there's all kinds of things that go along with it.
• 1:24:30
  Sharon Stone: And none of it is good news. I mean, you really get over the the stuff because the stuff becomes almost stuff you can't even really enjoy anymore. You know, your life changes so radically. And so quickly. You know, once you get past the dry heaves and the whole shock of it, and you know, I was on Beverly Hills PD and after about I mean it wasn't even a year, maybe six or eight months, Beverly Hills rezoned and zoned my street out of Beverly Hills PD because they didn't want to deal with my fame. And so I bought a house that was in Beverly Hills. And then they zoned me out because they just didn't want to have to have their police dealing with all the stuff that was happening to me. And they just took me out of BHP day they actually moved the zone about two feet before my street which was one of the most just shocking. I mean, there's shocking police stories. But that was that's one of the shockers when you actually have your police department rezone you because they don't want to deal with helping you. That was really intense because the police department, you get switched to a new police department. Like, hello, that didn't change my taxes.
• 1:26:25
  Randall Kaplan: You've you've had an amazing career like all of us, ups and downs, and you've had a lot of downs. And when we talk about our quest for excellence and our search for excellence, and to believe in yourself, and to be the best you can be, we all have some immense hurdles to go through, I want to talk about some of yours. On the career front, and on the health front, you've had a number of them, I'm going to tick off one when you're younger, you were hit by lightning, the chance of that happening are one in 700,000. And then after Total Recall how
• 1:26:59
  Sharon Stone: lucky I am.
• 1:27:02
  Randall Kaplan: That's that's one in 700,000. When you did Total Recall, you had a car accident on Sunset, you went home, you didn't realize you had been hurt. You had a concussion and some broken ribs, dislocated jaw and slipped desk didn't slow you down, dislocated shoulder, dislocated shoulder slipped disc Venu you had the tumor, as you mentioned, the non malignant tumor, you had a double mastectomy, then you there's the most serious one, you had a brain hemorrhage when you were 43 years old. And you describe in really just such emotional detail in the book about what you went through. And you talk about the odds of of your grandfather 3%, you had 1% audit at some point, can you talk about? There's a lot to talk about there. And I really want to get to the philanthropy part of your career as well. But can you just talk about your challenges, how you overcame them? And really, what your darkest moment was, when you're thinking about, Gosh, what what do I need to do? Am I ever going to recover? And just share that with everybody? Because look at where you are now you have a best selling book, your career's going great again, you have three amazing kids. I mean, let's let's just, if you could walk us through that, please.
• 1:28:28
  Sharon Stone: Okay, you might need golf shoes. i Wow. Yeah.
• 1:28:37
  Sharon Stone: Well, I would like to say just for any other people who may go through this, the odds are much better. Now, when it happened to me, these things had just you know, angiograms, and all of these kinds of things, were all really new, and they're not new.
• 1:28:54
  Sharon Stone: And the thing that happened to me, there are new ways to fix it. Now. They can take a arteries out of pigs and arteries out of your leg and transplant them into your neck.
• 1:29:07
  Sharon Stone: Things they couldn't do and didn't know how to do at the time that this happened to me so that the odds of surviving what happened to me are higher now considerably higher. They're not fantastic, but they're higher.
• 1:29:26
  Sharon Stone: I really think that when any of us face these incredible challenges, and these are incredible challenges. And I look at others who face giant challenges, I look at Gabby Gifford. I mean, what an inspiration she is I, for me, Michael J. Fox was always the person that I really, really look to the fact that he went through and is going through what he goes through and puts in these unbelievable performances.
• 1:30:01
  Sharon Stone: And they're hilarious that he is able to face the challenges of his illness and delivered these brilliant, hilarious performances. To me sets a standard. And I just think that you can only take it a moment at a time. It's really like recovering from addiction, you know, you take it a day at a time. I think as we recover from anything, the most important thing that we learn is to stay present. And, you know, when I went back to work, and I can say this very specifically when I went back to work on ratchet.
• 1:30:40
  Sharon Stone: You know, I went out to lunch with Ryan Murphy. And he said, you know that he broke this part for me and he started to describe this character that she had a monkey on her head And the first thing that happened to me is I got filled with panic and dread that there would be an animal on my head and on my neck. And that was so frightening to me because my injury is in my head and my neck. And so he said to me, Well, you don't look very excited. And I didn't want him to think, oh, that's the most terrorizing concept I can possibly think of, what if I hurt my head or neck again? And so I kept throwing things out there? Like, what about if we had a leopard? You know, what if we had some kind of like, exotic cat, and, and the whole time I was just trying to manage this panic that I was having. And this whole kind of like, like, I have to stay in the room. And I have to, it's Ryan Murphy. And I have to he's, I'm going to have this part. And, and I have to deal with this. And I have to understand that I can do this, you know, and I was, frankly, just like, you know, because without the medication that I take, I stutter. And I'm like, Oh, I can't start stuttering now, and I can't panic. I have to like, process this. And he's looking at me like, she's so weird. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I am. I am weirder than you even know, dude, I am so weird. You have no idea how weird it is where I've been. And I'm just thinking, okay, I can handle this. And I'm like, Well, you know, we worked with a monkey on another show. And that monkey really acted out. And I don't, I'm not sure that's really a great idea. You might, you're gonna have to get a really good monkey, if we're going to do this, because I'm trying to like stay in a logical conversation while having a full blown panic attack. Like this monkey could hurt my neck, and then I'll be Christopher Reeves. Because if I hurt the other side of my neck, I'll be paralyzed for the rest of my life. Oh, my God, what am I going to do? I'm going to have a logical conversation about this. Let's talk monkeys, shall we? You know, I'm just like, trying to like, deal with my panic attack the logic, the monkey, Ryan Murphy, the restaurant, how am I gonna do this, I gotta get out of here. I gotta go home, I gotta think about this. I gotta handle this.
• 1:33:05
  Sharon Stone: And then to go to work, and have this monkey, as my co star ended up being the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It ended up being the most freeing thing that ever happened to me.
• 1:33:19
  Sharon Stone: Because this neck and head injury is the monkey on my back.
• 1:33:22
  Sharon Stone: And I burst into tears saying it out loud. Because it is. It's the monkey on my back. I have one vertebral artery. I take medicine not to stutter and see weird colors flying through the air. And I've managed to make it back to be able to work, I've managed to make it back to be able to put all my senses together to be able to speak, I couldn't start to talk. In the beginning. I couldn't find my cup. If I put it down. I couldn't walk without dragging my right leg. And my foot was on the top. I was walking on the top of my foot. I couldn't write my own name for two years. And now I have to put a monkey on my head. And I'm like, I don't know if I can do it. You know? And I was like, so freaked out. And he's just looking at me like, What is she? What is wrong with her? You know? And so, my terror was so real. And I wanted to just show like, I'm okay to work. Because if you're not okay, in this town, they'll drive right over your head. You know, there's not like, you can be kind of okay, or almost Okay, or pretty good and will compassionately make sure you're okay on set. No, you have to be able to squat down, run a marathon, finish that marathon and then do it again for take two, you know, so I was trying to like, you know, and then I got to work and I was had to make sure like, I've got it together. And I'm fine every day. And look at me. I'm really good. I've been so happy. I'm happy to be here. You know, but I was freaked out and then I'd never done a limited series before. I'm a movie star. I'm not a TV star. So I didn't know how limited series worked. I didn't know you got a different director every day. And that you didn't shoot episode one then episode two then episode three.
• 1:35:42
  Sharon Stone: I didn't know you shot episode one on Monday and Episode Three on Tuesday and then episode seven on Wednesday. And then you went back to Episode One on Friday, I didn't, I didn't know that's how a limited series worked. I've never done one. And so by like Friday, I was like, I don't know what's going on. I don't know how this works. I thank God for Sarah Paulson who was producing it, and said, You know what, Sharon, you just have to stay in the day you're in.
• 1:36:12
  Sharon Stone: And then all of a sudden I was like, right, because that's how I've been living. That's how I've been getting better. That's how when the 10% of my brain that we normally use blew a fuse, I learned how to use the other 90% of my brain. That's how I learned to do what they call in neuroscience, a workaround to get around the scarred and broken part of my brain, to access other parts of my brain, and start to work in a new way. And that's how when you lose your photographic memory from over here, you start learning how to learn, and then you learn how to remember. And then you learn how to start getting some of that photo memory back. And then you start learning how to work again, and then you start learning how work works again, and then you start learning. Oh, this is how you do a limited series. Oh, when this is how you do that. And oh, this is how you do this and that. So the whole of the ratchet experience was for me relearning kind of my old job in a new way, in this new format of the digital limited series, while I had something on my head and neck, which was my don't ever touch me their place. So it was it was daunting, and thrilling.
• 1:37:37
  Sharon Stone: And then for me, this private, huge accomplishment, which thank God, Ryan shot in my friend's home, a home that I knew, like the back of my hand, which I think he did, in a really gracious, gracious way. It was such a gift to me, because it was a house I'd been in 1000 times.
• 1:37:59
  Randall Kaplan: It's a great story of overcoming just incredible odds. And
• 1:38:05
  Sharon Stone: I was lucky, I was so lucky for that specific job.
• 1:38:10
  Sharon Stone: And those specific challenges to happen to me,
• 1:38:15
  Randall Kaplan: just in terms of lucky to be alive. But not only did you not, not only did you survive, but you thrived. And you did a lot of work to get there. Couple of years, you said it took you to get back. And I just
• 1:38:30
  Sharon Stone: said that it took seven years to get all of my walking, all of my talking and all of my remembering consistent.
• 1:38:41
  Randall Kaplan: And so what's your advice in one or two sentences for those who are listening who are facing difficult medical odds are they're suffering something or the odds are low. And they need they need some encouragement.
• 1:38:59
  Sharon Stone: Faith and grit.
• 1:38:59
  Sharon Stone: You have to have faith you have to have faith, faith faith that you call this lesson to you.
• 1:39:08
  Sharon Stone: Because there's something you need to learn about yourself.
• 1:39:11
  Sharon Stone: And then you have to have the grit and the guts to learn it and accept this challenge and go get it. Go get that lesson. Go become the you that you needed to become go become the you that is bigger than the thing that happened. Because there is a you that's bigger than the thing that happened to you.
• 1:39:32
  Randall Kaplan: We're near the end, and we have to talk about your philanthropy which I think is the crown jewel of all the incredible achievements you've had in your life you've received, as I mentioned before the nobel peace summit Award, which is an award that all the Nobel Peace Prize winners give each year to whoever in the world of culture and entertainment, like the biggest impact in terms of promoting peace. You joined Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 1980 after you learned that your prom date in high school was killed by a drunk driver on his motorcycle 1984 You got involved in amfAR, the American Foundation for AIDS research.
• 1:40:11
  Randall Kaplan: After you shot a movie in Zimbabwe where you watch two young kids with AIDS, one caring the other who was mute. I was 37 years ago and you've been their spokesperson now for the last 26 years. You started an organization with your sister Kelly called Planet hope that provides outreach and educational services to the homeless and abused and terminally ill children and their families. You started hope for the holidays, which is given 400,000 toys to children living in homeless shelters and this is this amazing. Each gift is carefully chosen and wrapped with each child's name on it.
• 1:40:48
  Randall Kaplan: You volunteer at a halfway house for teenage girls who have been tried and convicted As felons but need to be given a second chance, so you started a charity called Homeless, not Toothless, which allows homeless kids and adults to have dental care. I mean, sharing this incredible, it says a tremendous amount about who you are what's behind all this? And have you ever stopped taking a moment, close your eyes to think about how many lives you saved, and the kind of impact you've had on 10s and 10s of 1000s, probably hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of people.
• 1:41:31
  Sharon Stone: I know. But I think the most important thing is that, you know, we get asked to do things. And I think we can't do every single thing we get asked to do. But it's important to do everything that we can't. People don't ask. Just to ask. I mean, of course, there are people that are going to try to take advantage in life. But for the majority of situations, people ask because they need.
• 1:42:03
  Sharon Stone: And we can't while we can accommodate every need, we can certainly accommodate somebody who's asked us every day. So I try to figure out which person I can help every day. And I just tried to ask the universe, show me who I can help. And show me what I can do. And show me where I can be of service. And I just tried to be a worthy conduit. I try to be if I can't do it, I try to line people up with someone who I think can do it.
• 1:42:47
  Sharon Stone: I'm not always the answer to everybody's issue. But I do know a lot of people and sometimes I'm the right answer. And that makes me feel great. That I can say well, you know, I do know a person for you. Or I know someone who might know someone for you. I feel like when people are trying to make their life better. That's already. That's already someone moving in the right direction.
• 1:43:29
  Randall Kaplan: What's your advice to people listening today? I think taking a step back. I think for all of us who want to achieve excellence, I think giving back is a very important part of that. I think it's, as you said, you feel so amazing. When you make a difference in people's lives, one of my goals in life is to make a difference in people's lives. And my philanthropy has been the most rewarding part of my career. But there's a lot of people listening. Yeah, I know, there's a lot of good causes, I want to write a check, I'll give a little bit of money. I kinda sorta want to get involved. But I don't really know how to do that. And I'm talking about not only kids who are coming right out of college, but people in the early middle and late stages of their careers. What's your advice to people who want to get involved in how they should go about getting involved? And and the last part of that is, how can they get involved with the charities that you're involved with?
• 1:44:28
  Sharon Stone: Well, first of all, there's always room for you somewhere. And if you have money, everybody wants your money. And there and just make sure that the organization is a registered 5013 C, make sure that they are documented so that you know that the money that you give is going to an organization and they have to list their standing, they have to list how much of their money goes to the practical services, and how much of it goes to staff. So when you look up their website, look at how they're rated. And then you can see is the money that you give actually going to the cause or is it just going to the staff, so you can look it up and you can see their rating, so it's really good to look and make sure they're registered.
• 1:45:13
  Sharon Stone: That's one thing. Another thing is, you know, a little bit of elbow grease is one at everywhere. So you can go in and you can work at any soup kitchen in your town. You can go in and offer your services anywhere homeless shelters, just anywhere Salvation Army, any of these places that give risks, donated clothing and stuff, they'll will accept your help to do almost anything. You can wash clothes in your washer, you can give hours to work. There's so many volun tear positions available anywhere and you can just look up online, where can I volunteer my time, at a charity in this zip code, and you will get some answers. Of course, Planet hope would love for you to volunteer, we have camps, we need camp counselors, we need doctors and dentists and everything because these kids come out of shelters.
• 1:46:18
  Sharon Stone: And the reason that we started homeless but not Toothless, is because you can actually go to school if you're homeless, but you can't go to school unless you have your teeth checked. And you can't get a job if your teeth are falling out. So we needed to make sure people could get dental care. And so if you can provide dental care or medical care, or any kind of care at all babysitting, even so that women can go to work, you can offer all kinds of support, so that people can do the things that they need to do to get jobs, and don't have the money to pay people to do so that they can go to work. So healthcare of any kind, childcare of any kind, tutoring services of any kind, and you don't have to be a teacher to give tutoring services, you just have to be good at it. Can you help a little kid with his homework?
• 1:47:12
  Sharon Stone: Can you teach someone an instrument, anything you can offer anything, you're good at anybody?
• 1:47:24
  Randall Kaplan: When we're finished with the video, and before we put it up on our website, we're going to list all of your charities and put all the contact information up there. Thank you. So people will know how to get involved with with those charities are all amazing causes. Thank you. We've covered a lot today. And I want to end by asking you, is there anything we haven't covered in our search for excellence, to reach our potential to overcome our obstacles to be the best we can be and to believe in ourselves that we haven't covered? And what advice do you want to add to what we've already gone over today?
• 1:48:05
  Sharon Stone: Yes, I would like to say that if you feel you're being abused in any way, it's not a secret that you should keep. There is a thing called Teen line that you can call in there are teenagers that will answer your call if you're a kid or a teenager, and you don't want to talk to an adult called Teen line. If you feel afraid, and you need to go to a shelter, but you're afraid that your spouse we'll find out, there are lines that you can call that will protect you completely where you will remain anonymous.
• 1:48:39
  Sharon Stone: And we're going to put some of these numbers up for you. If there's any kind of domestic abuse and you feel so terrorized that you can't get out and you can't make a call. There are ways that you can call that people can't find out that you've called we're going to put numbers up so that you will be able to call anonymously and get help. But if you are in a situation where you are so bullied or oppressed, that you can't ask for help. We're gonna put up ways that you can get help. And I do want to say if you feel you can ask for help.
• 1:49:16
  Sharon Stone: That's the time when you really do need to ask for help. Because if you feel that you're so in danger that you cannot ask for help. Please know that this is the time that you must ask for help and the time that you will be helped. Thanks. Thanks so much,
• 1:49:38
  Randall Kaplan: Sharon, this has been fantastic. I'm so grateful for you to you for sharing your story today. I look forward to seeing you again.
• 1:49:48
  Sharon Stone: Randy, I'm really honored to be included in this series. You've interviewed some of the most extraordinary people in the world. And I'm just honored and humbled to be among them. Thank you, Randy. And all the good work that you do in the world and everything you've given to the world is hugely meaningful. And I you are to be applauded for everything you do.
• 1:50:09
  Sharon Stone: And just knowing you is a part of my bucket list.
• 1:50:13
  Randall Kaplan: Well, incredible. You're incredible.
• 1:51:11
  Randall Kaplan: Sharon, thanks.