Sharon Stone lauds the rise of female filmmakers for undercutting the "male fantasy"

Despite becoming one of the ’90s’ preeminent sex symbols for her role in Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone is thrilled that the conversation around sex in films has changed. While she didn’t wade into the still-murky waters of actual sex scene discourse, the actor took some time during her press conference at the Taormina Film Festival today to praise female filmmakers for changing the tide. 

“I think that now that women are writing, directing, producing, filming and more and more a part of filmmaking, films are less about men writing films about their fantasies of the way women are, and actresses are less asked to portray the male fantasy, and then critics are less asked to tell us if we fulfilled the male fantasy or not,” Stone said, via Deadline. “It’s more, ‘are we fulfilling the human condition?’”

The actor elaborated on these thoughts in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, in which she emphasized the fact that “Hollywood is set up to be misogynistic” because “It’s a business run by men. It’s a business where men make the money. Where men write, produce and direct the projects. Where men write the parts that are played by women.” Despite the fact that her Basic Instinct character, Catherine Trammell, was one such part, Stone said that she “wanted to play her so badly that I had the script on top of my refrigerator for eight months.”

Perhaps counterintuitively, Stone also sees the film—which infamously features a shot of her bare crotch—as a sort of watershed moment for women in movies. “You know, until Basic Instinct, women had to cross their legs a certain way on the screen, at the ankles,” she told the outlet. “You couldn’t cross your legs like a man. You weren’t even allowed to show your armpits. We had to get permission for me to show my armpits in that movie.”

Still, despite how much she vouches for women in the industry, Stone has gotten herself into some (deserved) hot water recently for seemingly not being able to extend the same sort of empathy toward male victims—specifically those who were assaulted by her old friend Kevin Spacey. After accusing Spacey’s victims of “blaming him for not being able to come to terms with themselves” last month (which sounds a bit like she’s suggesting it was their fault for being closeted), the actor doubled down on her support in the same THR interview.

“There’s so much hatred for him because in his case it was man-on-man. That’s why he’s not allowed to come back. Because he offended men,” she said. “But can I tell you how many men have grabbed my genitals in my lifetime? A lot more than Kevin Spacey has grabbed men’s genitals. And none of them has ever apologized to me.” While it’s certainly great that the industry is changing in the ways Stone detailed above, it will never be fully liberated until everyone is free from predators—regardless of gender.