Sharon Stone has every reason to be tough. It’s not just that her father hung the carcasses of the animals he shot on the clothesline during her childhood in rural Pennsylvania and her mother once pulled a huge nail out of Stone’s foot that had gone straight through, wrapped it up and then sent her back outside to play. Stone, now 68, was a self-described “weirdo” growing up, bringing a live bat to school for show-and-tell and chasing kids with snakes rather than “playing bride.” Extremely smart, she started second grade at age 5 and took college classes  at 15 (she got into Howard, she says, but her father was afraid to send her — “I imagine I would for sure have just a bundle of beautiful little biracial children right now. I’d be so happy”). The reason she moved to New York at 19 to be an Eileen Ford model was that her older brother had been busted for having several kilos of cocaine and sent to Attica, and the threats against her family from people who thought he might rat them out made it too risky for her to stay.

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But Stone wasn’t afraid. “I grew up with boys. My older brother is seven years older, and if I didn’t want to die, I had to be physical to not get the shit beat out of me.” Back then, she rode horses naked, shot guns and arrows and swung happily from vines over a ravine.

Stone had good luck in the city. At 20, she got an audition to be an extra in Woody Allen’s 1980 “Stardust Memories.” She roller-skated there with her big black modeling portfolio under her arm — “Clomp, clomp, clomp,” she says — and sat silently beside Allen at a bus stop while he took a few minutes to look it over. A couple days later, when an actress with a bigger role dropped out, Allen chose Stone to take her place.

But Stone also has had some seriously bad luck: In 2001, nine years after she played the part of the panty-less serial killer Catherine Tramell in Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 “Basic Instinct,” which had catapulted her to superstardom, she had a vertebral artery rupture, a nine-day brain bleed and a stroke that took her seven years to come back from. During that time, she lost custody of her adopted son, Roan, now 26. (She has since adopted two more boys on her own, Laird, 21, and Quinn, 20.) “And I lost my place in the business,” she says, “and had to start from the bottom all over again.”

When asked how she got her career back, she says simply, “I didn’t.”  But in fact, Stone has made more than 40 movies, including Martin Scorsese’s 1995 “Casino,” opposite Robert De Niro, for which she won a Golden Globe and was nominated for a best actress Oscar. She’s also appeared on TV, including recently as a Sherry Lansing-style Hollywood executive opposite Sydney Sweeney in Season 3 of “Euphoria.” At the moment, Stone has three films in the can, including “In Memoriam” with Marc Maron, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June.

Bringing a live bat to show-and-tell and chasing kids around with snakes — were you kind of a dark kid?

I wouldn’t say so much that I was dark as I’ve always been full . I’m as fascinated by the dark as I am by the light; I’m not afraid of it. I was always in trouble for my naivete, mostly about why everybody was scared — scared of me bringing the bat to school, scared of me picking up snakes in the garden. People were scared when I wasn’t scared.

The “Basic Instinct” interrogation scene — were people afraid of you after that movie?

Yes. And what they would do is they would show the film to the press and then bring them in to interview me. They were terrified, and they would sit down opposite me and panic. That hasn’t changed; people are still terrified of me in one way or another. I think that the basic construct of a woman declaring herself as separate and indomitable was, and remains, a terrifying construct.

How do you feel about that when people say they’re afraid of you?

I’m starting to learn that there are just places and things I can’t do by myself; I need an icebreaker. I also really understand how I need to say, “Hi, I’m Sharon. What’s your name?” But it’s not me, right? It’s very hard for people to understand that I’m a fragile, physically little, delicate, shy, private, loner, gentle, very empathetic artist. Not at all like that character, nothing to do with that character.

I guess we need more comedy.

Right? Because I was in “Irreconcilable Differences” — that was my lane, right? My lane was never going to be sex psychos.

Can we talk about “Euphoria,” where you played an executive opposite Sydney Sweeney’s sex worker?

In “Euphoria,” I tried to get Sydney Sweeney’s character to stop being a cam girl and to come and work for me on the series I was producing called “L.A. Nights.” And she agreed to stop being a cam girl — which she didn’t do . As you can see from Sydney’s new lingerie line, it didn’t take.

Did you always want to act?

No. I wanted to direct. But I do have that troubling vagina issue that got in the way of being allowed to have jobs or be paid fairly for them or be considered to have an intelligent point of view.

Now you can do some directing?

Now I have the troubling postmenopausal problem that makes me feel too tired to put up with people’s bullshit in order to take a directing position. I would prefer if they just kept their opinions about that to themselves while I live a happy life.

Did you choose the ACLU for your Power of Women charity because of what Trump is doing to the country?

I’m not going to make a political statement. But the majority of my global humanitarian work focuses on the things that are most needed, and right now it feels like American civil liberties is something that is up for grabs. And though most of the online chatter — the really negative stuff — is done by about 3% of the people, it makes up 300% of خبرگذاری خوزستان the bad news that we see on our devices. So it’s really important that those of us who want to be loving, concerned and protective of each other’s civil liberties need to be vocal about it.

Have you ever had the opportunity to talk to some of the tech people who seem to be in control of those algorithms? Mark Zuckerberg?

No. And I say this from a loving heart, because I’m a mom and I’m a little bit on the spectrum: A lot of these tech people who are making up a lot of these choices and algorithms and ideas about how we should do things are people who are on the spectrum. They’re people who are highly intellectual but whose emotional intelligence may not be on par with that. And the balance might not be a healthy way to be guiding us into the future. And so to allow people who are out of balance to be guiding us forward is probably why we all have diarrhea right now. And I think it’s really important to notice if you’re shitting yourself, maybe you’re not making the smartest moves for us as a nation.

Is it true that Ryan Murphy told you he had written the lead role in his TV series “Ratched” with you in mind? What kind of discussions did you have with him?

Ryan Murphy took me out to lunch and he said, “I wrote you a part.” And I said, “OK.” And he said, “Well, you don’t seem to be very excited.” I said, “Well, I don’t know what it is yet.” He was not very happy with me that I wasn’t just excited that he did it. And I didn’t want to tell him that people write parts for me with a bit of regularity, and I don’t take all of them. Clearly, they’re not as special as Mr. Murphy. But then he said that he wanted me to have a monkey on my shoulder for the entire part. The monkey came over to my house and, no offense to all of the amazing gentlemen who have been my co-stars on the many, many years I’ve been in this business, but I have to say, the monkey was the most fun, the most present, the most hilarious and a little bit mean-humored in a way that was absolutely riotously hilarious.

And Mohammed Ali. You said you met him when you were a teenager in Pennsylvania participating in a beauty pageant?

Muhammad Ali had been in Hershey with his body man and had walked into the pageant —probably because they were dogs — and they’d seen me. And Ali called my dad. He said he wanted to put me in the movie “The Greatest.” And Dad said, [ in a low voice ] “Mr. Ali, Sharon will be staying in college. She has a very high IQ. I’m not sure you’re aware of that. She’s going to be an architectural engineer. She’s been tested. We have plans for her. She won’t be being in the film business, Mr. Ali. Thank you for your call.” And Ali said, “You could put that girl under a bushel basket, Mr. Stone. That girl’s going to be a movie star no matter what you think.”

Everyone still talks about your costumes in “Casino.” Did you keep anything?

I put my costumes in my contract in the ’۸۰s, and everyone made fun of me. “What are you, some kind of hoarder?” But women didn’t get paid in the business. And I was on an episodic TV show, and one day I walked out and my underwear and bras were all for sale on a folding plastic table outside. And I was so embarrassed, and I was like, “This is just so degrading to me as a woman.” I just went to my manager and I was like, “Chuck, I want my costumes in my contract.” He goes, “That is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.” I’m like, “I just don’t want them auctioning off my underwear anymore. If I keep them, great. If I burn them, great. If I give them to Goodwill, great. But this? Not anymore.”

Carrie Fisher taught me how to write my contract, thank God, a hundred years ago because [her mother, Debbie Reynolds] taught her. And then the studios still want to give me a hard time. “You can’t have that in your contract.” “Well, guess what? Carrie did, and so did Debbie, and so do I.” And that is the power of women , right there, ladies. Read your contract, because the agents that work at your agency, they work for the studios, not for you. God love them, but that’s the reality.

This interview was edited and condensed from two conversations.

Charity Spotlight: American Civil Liberties Union

Most of Sharon Stone’s global humanitarian endeavors have been around issues of health, and she’s been recognized for it: In 2013, she won the Nobel Peace Summit Award for her work in HIV/AIDS (she stepped in for Elizabeth Taylor in 1995 to host the annual Cinema Against AIDS gala in Cannes, later taking over leadership of the campaign). In 2023, she was named Global Citizen of the Year by the United Nations Correspondents Association for her efforts supporting children’s charities, disaster relief and homelessness. “The work that I do outside of the Hollywood community is probably more time-consuming than the work I’ve done within the Hollywood community,” she says.

For her Power of Women charity, Stone is taking a detour to highlight the importance of the American Civil Liberties Union, the nonprofit founded in 1920 to defend and preserve individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution — free speech, voting rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and freedom from government abuse.

“At a time where it becomes a controversial statement to raise a flag in your own yard, I think it’s an important thing to be able to feel proud of your own country and protective of your own neighbors,” she says.

It’s not a light subject, but looking back, Stone smiles. “When I was a young person, you actually got a little cardboard card that you carried in your wallet,” she says. “And I, for decades, was a card-carrying member of the ACLU.”

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