Sharon Stone says Robert Evans asked her to sleep with “Sliver” co-star Billy Baldwin in 1993 to boost their on-screen chemistry, naming the producer and actor for the first time since describing the situation as a blind item in her 2021 memoir.
Speaking on Louis Theroux’s podcast, Stone, 66, said Evans summoned her from the set to his office to make the request for her to sleep with leading man Baldwin. Stone said Evans believed sleeping with Baldwin, now 61, would give the pair better “chemistry on screen,” which would “save the movie.”
She explained: “He’s running around his office in sunglasses explaining to me that he slept with Ava Gardner and I should sleep with Billy Baldwin, because if I slept with Billy Baldwin, Billy Baldwin’s performance would get better.
“And we needed Billy to get better in the movie because that was the problem.
“And if I could sleep with Billy then we’d have chemistry on screen, and if I would just have sex with him then that would save the movie,” she continued, adding, “The real problem with the movie was me, because I was so uptight, and so not like a real actress who could just f–k him and get things back on track. The real problem was I was such a tight ass.”
Stone said she was insulted on hearing Evans’ demand as she had just come from co-starring with Michael Douglas in 1992’s “Basic Instinct.”
She added: “I didn’t have to f–k Michael Douglas. Michael could come to work and know how to hit those marks, and do that line, and rehearse and show up. Now all of a sudden I’m in the ‘I have to f–k people’”‘ business.”
Stone wrote in her 2021 book “The Beauty of Living Twice” that if the unnamed producer [Evans] had cast a better leading man, the on-screen chemistry would have been far better. She wrote that the actor in question, whom they had insisted on hiring “couldn’t get one whole scene out in the test.”
“Now you think if I f–k him, he will become a fine actor? Nobody’s that good in bed,” she wrote, “I felt they could have just hired a costar with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines. I also felt they could f–k him themselves and leave me out of it. It was my job to act and I said so.”
But, “This was not a popular response. I was considered difficult.”
Sliver took fell below box office expectations with $116 million worldwide.
Evans, who died in 2019 aged 89, is best known for his work on Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), “Love Story” (1970) and “The Godfather” (1972). He was made head of Paramount Pictures in 1967 but stepped down in 1974 to focus on producing his own movies.
After he left Paramount, his cocaine use “achieved legendary proportions”, according to The New Yorker, and he was tied to, but never charged in connection with, the murder of the producer Roy Radin by Miami drug dealers.
And cultural critic Peter Biskind wrote in his book “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” that while Evans was married seven times, his voracious taste in women ranged to “models, actresses, and hookers.” He could never remember their names in the morning, and his housekeeper would have to slip him a note with the information along with his breakfast, Biskind wrote.
Stone also said on “The Louis Theroux Podcast” that she formerly had a deal with Miramax and found Harvey Weinstein to be a “pig.”
“He was certainly comfortable with throwing me across the room he was angry with me because I wouldn’t do what he wanted me to do,” she explained, adding she was glad Weinstein is in jail.
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