Sharon Stone

Sharon Vonne Stone was born on March 10, 1958 in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Stone attended Saegertown High School and is noted to have been a smart and ambitious child. She has described herself as "a nerdy, ugly duckling who sat in the back of the closet with a flashlight, reading.

As a young woman, her IQ was tested and rated at a high level of 154 points. After skipping a grade in school, she was involuntarily transferred from Saegertown High School to Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, enrolling at the young age of 15.

Because she was very self-conscious of her looks, her uncle bribed her with $100 to enter a local beauty contest in order to improve her self-esteem. She lost the contest, but one of the judges encouraged her to enter the Miss Pennsylvania contest, which she declined. Instead, she entered the county contest and won the title of Miss Crawford County in Meadville. One of the pageant judges said she should quit school and move to New York to become a model. When her mother heard this, she agreed, and, in 1977 Stone left Meadville, moving in with an aunt in New Jersey. Within four days of her arrival in New Jersey, she was signed by the elite Ford modeling agency in New York.

After joining the Ford Modeling Agency, Stone spent a few years modeling, and appeared in TV commercials for Burger King, Clairol and Maybelline. Throughout the rest of the 1980s she appeared in several movies of poor quality, such as King Solomon's Mines (1985), and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1987).

Her appearance in Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger gave her career a much needed jolt. To coincide with the movie's release, she posed nude for Playboy magazine, showing off the buff body she developed in preparation for the movie.

The role that made her a true star was that of Catherine Tramell, a brilliant, coke-snorting, bisexual, mind-game playing serial killer in the sexually-charged Basic Instinct.

In 1996, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role as Ginger in Martin Scorsese's Casino. After a brief hiatus, Stone attempted a return to the mainstream with a role in the film Catwoman; however, the film was a commercial and critical flop.

After years of litigation, Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction was released in 2006. The movie was shunned by critics and moviegoers.