On Arte, Sharon Stone or the bitter experience of being an actress in Hollywood

In 2008, Sharon Stone lost custody of her son after the judge asked the child: “You know your mother makes erotic films? » The entire career and life of the actress is contained in this “justice” decision. Sharon Stone had to constantly fight, in a Hollywood consumed by misogyny, to become an actress, to have a say in her roles, and to receive the same salary as her male counterparts. Just one example, so telling: in Basic Instinct (1992), by Paul Verhoeven, she shared the bill with Michael Douglas: she received 500,000 dollars for the film, while he received 14 million dollars…

It’s hard to be a woman in the 80s

Nathalie Labarthe’s documentary strives to retrace the career of the actress through this feminist lens: it was difficult to be an ambitious woman in the 1980s, when female roles were exclusively invented by men and actresses “So we are not playing a woman, but the idea that a male screenwriter has of a woman”. Or roles of “obviously stupid blonde, girlfriend, mistress, fragile woman saved by the hero”.

On film sets, she recently explained on television, she was often the only woman in the audience among hundreds of men… and dressed as an Eve. In 2018, Sharon Stone explained on television: “ I have been doing this job for forty years. Can you imagine what it was like forty years ago? With my physique, and coming from a town in Pennsylvania, and without protection? »

No need to say more. To exist alongside her physique, she developed her sense of humor and unflinchingly agreed to support dozens of causes, particularly related to AIDS. The portrait is flattering, as is often the case in this Arte box.

Sharon Stone, the survival instinct, Sunday, Arte, 11:5 p.m.