Sharon Stone recalled the “awful” time she dressed herself for her first Oscars in 1992.
In a new episode of iHeart’s Table For Two podcast released on Tuesday, the 64-year-old actor spoke to host Bruce Bozzi about the first time she attended the awards ceremony. When nobody wanted to dress her, Stone decided to take matters into her own hands.
“When I first got invited to the Oscars right before Basic Instinct, the movie hadn’t come out, so no one would lend me a dress,” she explained. “Then it came out a few days before the Oscars and I was going to present but no one would give me a dress.”
The Casino star admitted that she “didn’t have any money to buy anything” for the awards show at the time, but ultimately purchased a Betsey Johnson polyester jumpsuit because “that was the best I could do.”
“I’m doing my own hair and makeup and I was just like, ‘Wow, this is awful. Like, how am I going to do this, right?’” she recalled.
Once she was inside the theater for the ceremony, things started to look up.
“But then I got there and I was like in the fourth or fifth row back, which was really good,” Stone said. “And I was on the aisle, and I was seated right behind Anthony Hopkins, and when I walked by, he put his hands together and put them over his head like a champion and held them up to me when I passed him. I was like, ‘Oh my God, he saw my movie.’”
When Stone told her father about the stressful experience dressing herself, he gave his daughter some sound advice. “I told my dad, and my dad was like, ‘Kid, you could look good in a burlap sack,’” he said. “I was like ‘Oh, right.’ So after that, I thought, ‘It doesn’t matter, I can wear a T-shirt to the Oscars.”
“So I did,” she said.
Sharon Stone went on to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her role in the 1996 movie, Casino. That same year, she famously walked the Oscars red carpet wearing a black Gap T-shirt under an Armani velvet jacket with a Valentino skirt.
The Total Recall star, who is known as one of Hollywood’s most popular sex symbols of the nineties, has worn a number of iconic red carpet ensembles over the years. After turning heads with her casual Oscars look in 1996, she paired her then-husband Phil Bronstein’s white button down dress shirt from The Gap with a lavender Vera Wang skirt for the same awards ceremony two years later.
The simple but elegant look was recreated by actor Zendaya at the 2022 Oscars, who wore a cropped silk white shirt and silver embroidered skirt designed by Valentino. Stone gave the Euphoria star’s outfit her seal of approval on Instagram when she reposted a side-by-side image of their similar looks.
“Huge fan of you beauty,” Stone captioned the post.
The 95th Academy Awards will take place on Sunday 12 March at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
