In a way, Stone explores both of those questions in her new autobiography, “ The Beauty of Living Twice” (Knopf), in which she is uncommonly candid about life, fame, and trauma. This was evident moments into a recent Zoom call, when Stone, signing on from her home in West Hollywood, stumbled in with the teleconferencing equivalent of a pratfall, shocked at her own ability to get the sound working. But that isn’t a particularly useful way to understand who Stone is: a seeker, a survivor, a no-bullshit artist, a commanding talent (just rewatch her Oscar-nominated role in Martin Scorsese’s “Casino”), and a bit of a kook.
She certainly looked the part-and played it to the hilt-in her breakout role, the man-eating novelist Catherine Tramell, in the 1992 thriller “Basic Instinct.” Her performance (and, yes, the leg-crossing thing) was so indelible that, nearly three decades on, her public persona remains frozen as a femme fatale. First of all, erase from your mind the image of Sharon Stone, icy sex goddess.
