Sharon Stone on her sex symbol status: "That's hilarious, you should see me in the morning"

Sharon Stone on her sex symbol status: "That's hilarious, you should see me in the morning"

It's been 21 years since THAT scene in Basic Instinct, but Sharon Stone still radiates the kind of sex appeal that makes men feel weak at the knees.

The actress is 55 and in her words “a grown-up woman with three children”.

Despite the ordinary life she insists she leads away from the set, Sharon continues to defy time in an extraordinary way.

She has shunned plastic surgery yet still looks as good as she did when she was revealing all on the big screen.

In her latest film â€" Lovelace, a biopic telling the story of 1970s porn star Linda Lovelace â€" Sharon leaves the sex scenes to her 27-year-old co-star Amanda Seyfried.

Sharon keeps herself covered up in dowdy clothes for the role of Lovelace’s mother Dorothy Boreman.

It’s rare to see her playing a mum but she says the part is much more her style than the sexy roles she is famed for.

She also reveals that at the start of her career no one believed she had sex appeal.

The star on the red carpet

Sharon says: “People didn’t think I was sexy or pretty, and Chuck, my manager for 30 years, would call me up and say ‘You can’t get that movie because they don’t think that you are hot’.

“I’m such a bookworm â€" I’m always at home, shy, in my library, and it was like ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do?’ because I was always with big, black clothes and my glasses.

“Then my friend, Marilyn Grabowski, who was [photography] editor of Playboy, said, ‘You should do a Playboy spread’. She said, ‘If you tell people you are sexy they will think you are sexy, use your brain’.

“And so we did this thing and people decided ‘Oh, she’s sexy’.”

She laughs: “Then I got endlessly cast in the sexy parts and that was fantastic because who doesn’t want to be gorgeous and hot and sexy?”

But then I couldn’t get any other kind of parts, and so it’s taken until now to start getting these other kinds of parts, which ar e really fun.

“People thought I was a sex symbol which to me is the most hilarious thing of all time. You should see me in the morning. It’s really not that hot, honestly.

“I could live in my flannel pyjamas for ever. My father always used to say, ‘If you don’t get out of that flannel nightgown, nobody is ever going to marry you’.”

She adds: “It’s fun to play a character people don’t even recognise me in. It was fun walking down the street and have my manager drive right by me and be like, ‘Where is she?’.”

A few years ago it would not have been a surprise to see Sharon cast as Linda Lovelace, the first porn mega star, who starred in 70s X-rated movie Deep Throat.

Sharon plays the mother of a porn star in Lovelace

It catapulted Lovelace into a glitzy celebrity world where she became the poster girl for female sexual freedom â€" until she revealed the violence and abuse behind it. Sharon says her part as the troubled star’s mum is “intriguing”.

Lovelace, who died in 2002, revealed in her autobiography that her domineering mother beat her with a belt. When Linda became pregnant aged 19, her mum forced her to have the child adopted.

Sharon says: “To see that this mother, though she can look villainous, was doing the best she could with what she had and what she knew, and coming from a dysfunction in her own past she made mistakes but she was still that woman that got dinner on the table.

"She was still trying, and still loving her husband and still working hard.”

Proud mum-of-three Sharon â€" who suffered several miscarriages â€" ad opted all her children, Roan, 12, Laird, seven, and Quinn, six.

Twice-divorced Sharon speaks passionately about being a single mum.

She said: “When they’re not in school they come everywhere with me.”

Sharon’s early life was far removed from showbiz.

She grew up in rural Pennsylvania, the second of four children to her housewife mum and factory worker dad, and took her first part-time job working in McDonald’s.

Sharon excelled in school and won a scholarship to university where she planned to study creative writing.

But when a beauty contest judge suggested she start using her looks, she dropped out and went to work as a Ford model in New York.

She soon turned to acting but it was another 10 years before her breakthrough which came in 1990 in Total Recall.

Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct

Two years later she was cast as a sex-crazed killer in Basic Instinct.

She stripped for the numerous sex scenes but critics said the film was a flop.

However, she earned an Oscar nomination in 1995 for the acclaimed Casino.

Two years after starring in Diabolique in 1996, Sharon hit 40. She believes this milestone caused her career to nosedive. She turned her attentions to family life and married second husband Phil Bronstein.

Disaster struck in 2001 when Sharon suffered a brain haemorrhage.

She said: “My head blew up. It was almost as if I was shot. I was haemorrhaging into my brain for 11 days before they found out what was going on.”

She added: “I was really lucky not to die, so it feels fantastic to be older and alive and to be playing older and alive people.”

Sharon, who split from journalist Phil three years after the haemorrhage, added: “I don’t care if I fail because what’s failure?

I failed at the biggest things there are in life. I failed in my health, I failed in my marriage, I failed in everything and I’ve picked myself up and gone on.”

Sharon laughs at her sex symbol status

She relaunched her career in little-seen films and four episodes of TV series Law Order. She also starred in Basic Instinct 2 and now she’s back in demand.

Sharon has also emerged as a philanthropist, raising money for her charity, Planet Hope, which helps needy children.

But despite the serious parts and good deeds, she says she does not regret the nude scenes.

“My father asked me when we did Basic Instinct, ‘Do you have to be naked all the time?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m playing a sociopathic, sexual serial killer’.”

And even though she has a penchant for toyboys â€" most recently she dated a 27-year-old model â€" she’s ruled out cosmetic surgery.

Sharon says: “I think that in the art of ageing well, there’s this sexuality to having those imperfections.”

She adds: “Now I’m playing a lot of character parts it’s kind of a relief because how long can you wear high heels?

“Don’t tell anybody but I ’m excited I can now play things that are a bit closer to my comfort zone.

"I feel that I’m going to play mothers and ultimately grandmothers.”

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