Legendary actress Sharon Stone has her eyes on her dream role. But it’s a sharp departure from the villains she’s often typecast as.
The beloved actress, 67, who is known for iconic roles in films ranging from Casino to Basic Instinct, revealed in a new interview that she’d love to tackle the role of her late friend and comedy icon Phyllis Diller, who passed away in 2012.
“I do want to play Phyllis Diller very, very badly,” Stone, who stars alongside Bob Odenkirk in Nobody 2, told Business Insider in a new interview. “She and I were very close friends. Phyllis made little paintings for all my kids. She cooked me dinner a lot of times — that woman could cook. I told her I wanted to play her, and she sat down and taught me her laugh. She made me practice her laugh!”
Stone went on to explain that Diller’s journey from struggling comic to living legend was extraordinary, and that there are a variety of other stars who could tackle the roles of the fellow comics who surrounded her.
“You know, she didn’t hit it big until she was 49. She lived in a trailer park with five kids and her schizophrenic husband, and practiced her act on women at the laundromat. It’s unbelievable. I think there are great actors who could play Bob Hope, Red Buttons, Johnny Carson. Sam Rockwell could play Johnny in his sleep. We were tight,” said Stone. “Yes, I’m desperate to play her.”
Stone started as a model, and still does a significant amount of modeling work these days. (“I’m still modeling, and I still make more money today modeling than in film,” she noted. “It’s still a huge part of my reality.”) But at the time, she was hoping to become a director.
“Back then, I wanted to be a director, but the pesky vagina has stood in my way. Because how could you possibly have a brain and a vagina? It seems to have confounded so many,” she explained.
Her most important role these days is the mom of three boys: Roan, Laird, and Quinn. Stone said she managed to find inspiration for her Nobody 2 character from watching them play violent video games during the pandemic.
“I said, ‘I want to play a character that essentially comes right out of social media,'” she told BI.
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Related: Sharon Stone Reveals Why She Was ‘Furious’ With ‘Casino’ Co-Star Robert De Niro