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Sharon Stone thought she’d stabbed her co-star to death while filming Basic Instinct sex scene

‘I was horrified, naked, and stained with fake blood,’ actor recalled

Adam White
Friday 19 March 2021 04:48 EDT
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Basic Instinct (1992) - Trailer

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Sharon Stone thought that she’d stabbed her co-star to death while they filmed a “horrifying” sex scene that featured her naked and covered in fake blood.

The Oscar nominee was filming the opening sequence of her star-making movie Basic Instinct when the incident occurred. The scene depicts Stone’s character having sex with her boyfriend, only for her to stab him with an ice pick at the point of orgasm.

Writing in her new memoir The Beauty of Living Twice, which has been extracted in Vanity Fair, Stone recalled: “At one point we cut and the actor did not respond. He just lay there, unconscious. I began to panic; I thought that the retractable fake ice pick had failed to retract and that I had in fact killed him.”

Stone remembers director Paul Verhoeven insisting she make the scene “furious”, with the filmmaker telling her to “hit him harder” and crying “more blood, more blood!”.

“It seemed I had hit the actor so many times in the chest that he had passed out,” Stone continued. “I was horrified, naked, and stained with fake blood. And now this. It seemed like there was no line I wouldn’t be asked to skate up to the very edge of to make this film.”

Stone was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in the movie, in which she plays a bestselling author suspected of committing a series of murders.

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In her memoir, Stone also recalled the first time she saw the film’s infamous scene in which her character uncrosses her legs to reveal she’s not wearing underwear.

“I went to the projection booth, slapped Paul across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer,” Stone writes.

The Beauty of Living Twice is released on 1 April.

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