Sharon Stone says "darkness" came into her life after her villainous role in "Basic Instinct."
Stone, during an appearance on the "Mayim Bialik's Breakdown" podcast on Tuesday, Sept. 8, recalled roles that "scared" her, including the 1992 erotic thriller costarring Michael Douglas.
The actress said she did not mentally separate herself enough from her character in the film, in which she played Catherine Tramell, a provocative crime novelist and psychopathic serial killer.
"When I did 'Basic Instinct' and I had to ... really look at darkness, and yet I was very still young and inexperienced," Stone, 68, said. "And I didn't understand about holding the core, the core self, the golden self, and then wrapping the character around it with the power
of the self driving it. But just bringing it all in there and looking at it all, I opened some dark doors."
As a result of her critically acclaimed performance, Stone said, "Real dark people identified and came into my life thinking, 'Oh, you really are like me.'"
She continued, "Dark people, dark things, dangerous things came into my life because they thought, 'You're like me.' And then people believed some of the dark things that were said about me because they thought, 'Oh, you couldn't do that if you weren't like that because you've mirrored me to me.'"
Without getting into specifics, Stone said the new people around her became "dangerous" to be around.
"Just because the devil's a very interesting person at the cocktail party doesn't mean you should invite that person, give them a seat. Don't give that person a seat," she said. "You can't be porous. Because if any of it gets in, all of a sudden the dark people, they want to be around you. And when they find out that you're not like them, they get upset."
She added, "When the darkness came, I nearly died. But the light saved me. Fortunately, enough of me held to the light and that just the crack where it got in was dangerous."
Stone has previously opened up about how the movie's graphic reputation affected her personal life.
She told host Bruce Bozzi on the "Table for Two" podcast in 2023 that she lost custody of her son because of a judge's reaction to "a sixteenth of a second of possible nudity of me" in the film.
In the film's most famous scene, while being questioned by police, Stone's character uncrosses her legs while wearing a short dress, revealing her lack of underwear.
"When the judge asked my child, my tiny little boy, 'Do you know your mother makes sex movies?'" she said of son Roan Bronstein, now 26, whom she shares with journalist Phil Bronstein. "This kind of abuse by the system, that it was considered what kind of parent I was because I made that movie."
In a 2021 interview with The New Yorker, Stone said the film was shocking for the era.
"Now people walk around showing their [genitals] on Netflix, but in the olden days, what we were doing was very new," Stone continued. "This was a feature film for a major studio, and we had nudity, sex, homosexuality, all these things that, in my era, were breaking norms."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sharon Stone 'nearly died' after 'Basic Instinct' role, she says
