Sharon Stone recreates the iconic Basic Instinct scene 30 years on

Sharon Stone has recreated her iconic pose from Paul Verhoeven’s irrepressibly over-the-top 90s thriller Basic Instinct in a new Instagram post.

The 1992 film stars Michael Douglas as Nick Curran, a disgraced San Francisco homicide detective with a weakness for whiskey and beautiful women, and Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell, a wealthy heiress and novelist who Curran believes has murdered her ex-rockstar boyfriend. 

In one of the film’s most memorable moments, Stone’s character is at a police station under interrogation for the murder of a rock star. Wearing a barely-there white dress, Catherine smokes a cigarette, crossing and uncrossing her legs to reveal that she isn’t wearing any underwear.

In an Instagram post shared yesterday (June 28), the actor wore a t-shirt depicting a cartoon version of the scene. “Been there, done that; got the T-Shirt @groovyshelly,” read the caption.

Stone has since spoken out against the scene, alleging that she was tricked into showing her bare crotch. Verhoeven maintained that “Sharon is lying”, telling Icon in 2017, “Any actress knows what she’s going to see if you ask her to take off her underwear and point there with the camera”.

Nearly 30 years after its original release, Studiocanal is releasing a newly restored version of the cult film. To celebrate, Dazed spoke to Basic Instinct costume designer Ellen Mirojnick (of Fatal Attraction, Showgirls, and Bridgerton fame) to discover the stories behind its most seminal looks, as fresh today as they were three decades ago, and the one thing she’d change if she could do it all again.

Revisit the iconic scene below.