Sharon Vonne Stone (born March 10, 1958) is an American actress. Known for primarily playing femme fatales and women of mystery on film and television, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1990s. She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a nomination for an Academy Award. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1995 and was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2005 (Commander in 2021).
After modeling in television commercials and print advertisements, Stone made her film debut as an extra in Woody Allen's dramedy Stardust Memories (1980) and played her first speaking part in Wes Craven's horror film Deadly Blessing (1981). In the 1980s, she appeared in such pictures as Irreconcilable Differences (1984), King Solomon's Mines (1985), Cold Steel (1987), and Above the Law (1988). She had a breakthrough with her part in Paul Verhoeven's science fiction action film Total Recall (1990), before rising to international recognition when she portrayed Catherine Tramell in another Verhoeven film, the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992), for which she earned her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.
Stone's performance as a trophy wife in Martin Scorsese's epic crime drama Casino (1995) earned her the best reviews of her career, the Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her other notable films include Sliver (1993), The Specialist (1994), The Quick and the Dead (1995), Sphere (1998), The Mighty (1998), The Muse (1999), Catwoman (2004), Broken Flowers (2005), Alpha Dog (2006), Bobby (2006), Lovelace (2013), Fading Gigolo (2013), The Disaster Artist (2017), Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019), and The Laundromat (2019).
On television, Stone has had leading and supporting roles in productions such as the ABC miniseries War and Remembrance (1987), the HBO television film If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000), Steven Soderbergh's Mosaic (2017) and Ryan Murphy's Ratched (2020). She made guest appearances in The Practice (2004) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2010), winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for the former.
Early life and education
Sharon Vonne Stone was born on March 10, 1958, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, to Dorothy Marie (née Lawson), an accountant, and Joseph William Stone II, a tool and die manufacturer and former factory worker. She has three siblings: Michael, Kelly, and Patrick Joseph (died in 2023). She is of part Irish ancestry. In a 2013 interview with Conan O'Brien, she stated that her Irish ancestors arrived in the United States during the Great Famine. She has a reported IQ of 154. Stone was considered academically gifted as a child and entered the second grade when she was five years old. Stone said that she and her sister were both sexually abused as children by their maternal grandfather, in an interview to The New York Times in March 2021, while promoting her memoir The Beauty of Living Twice. At 14, her neck was badly injured while breaking a horse when the animal bucked as it charged toward a washing line.
She graduated from Saegertown High School in Saegertown, Pennsylvania, in 1975. Stone was admitted to Edinboro University of Pennsylvania on a creative writing scholarship at age 15, but quit college and moved to New York City to become a fashion model. Inspired by Hillary Clinton, Stone later went back to Edinboro University to complete her degree in 2016.
