For her part in ”Basic Instinct,” Sharon Stone looked to some of the great man-eating actresses in their signature performances-such as Barbara Stanwyck in ”Double Indemnity” and Kathleen Turner in ”Body Heat”-for inspiration. ”Both of these women were great,” Stone says in the December issue of Playboy. ”Kathleen Turner is a great, great actress whom I have always enjoyed watching. You never know what she`s going to do. So, yes, I thought of her when I did my part. I thought, `If Kathleen Turner did this, she wouldn`t draw a line here, she`d go further.` I also thought of Judy Davis. If she did this part, we`d be rocked right out of our seats. She has great courage. I want to be like her.” But all the inspiration was for naught. The first time Stone saw herself in the part, she wanted to run for cover. ”I was horrified. I was completely appalled. I was just sitting there and wondering how long it would be before it was over, wondering whom I should call first to tell them never to see this movie.”
Considering that Sir John Gielgud first acted in a Shakespearean play when he was 17 (one line in ”Henry V,” in 1921) and appeared last year in the film ”Prospero`s Books,” based on ”The Tempest,” he seems well qualified to write ”Acting Shakespeare” (Charles Scribner`s Sons). He`s confident enough to reprint some of his old reviews, even the bad ones. Of his ”Othello,” one critic wrote, ”Far from suggesting that he could eat Desdemona raw for breakfast, he makes one feel he would really like her served on a tray in the library.” The London Times gave him a rather backhanded compliment by saying, ”A case can be argued for great actors unwilling to play safe.”
