Sharon Stone’s relationship with director Sam Raimi doesn’t go beyond the 1995 western The Quick and the Dead.
Stone, 66, criticized Raimi, 65, during a recent Q&A session at the Torino Film Festival, at which she received a lifetime achievement award and screened the cult classic film.
Serving as both the star and a producer of the beloved film, Stone recalled being able to cast the likes of Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio before they rose to fame in Gladiator and Titanic, respectively. She also chose Raimi as the director, saying that she took the “opportunity to bring him from B movies to A movies.”
Prior to The Quick and the Dead, Raimi was best known for directing The Evil Dead films and Darkman. “Then he directed Spider-Man and became a very big A movie director,” Stone stated.
Noting that she “really liked his films,” Stone said Raimi was “different” from fellow director Martin Scorsese, whom she worked with on 1995’s Casino. “[Martin is] Italian, he has loyalty, he has that family feeling, and because of it, Marty and I still have a relationship and because of it Marty and I still work together,” she said.
Stone went on to slam Raimi for allegedly failing to follow in Scorsese’s, 82, footsteps. “He doesn’t have loyalty, he doesn’t have family, he didn’t ever talk to me again, he didn’t thank me, he didn’t hire me again, he didn’t acknowledge the relationship,” she claimed. “Marty, because I worked so hard and because I admired him so much, our relationship continues to today. There is depth.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Raimi’s reps for comment.
The Quick and the Dead starred Stone as a gunslinger named Ellen who seeks revenge for the death of her father. In addition to Stone, Crowe, 60, and DiCaprio, 50, the movie also starred Gene Hackman, Pat Hingle, Kevin Conway and Keith David. Though the action flick wasn’t a critical or financial success, it has become a cult classic over the years for its revisionist take on the western genre.
After wearing so many hats for The Quick and the Dead, Stone said she had hoped to eventually take on a directing role — but was shut down due to sexism in Hollywood.
“After I produced The Quick and the Dead, I came to the studio, I asked for $14 million, I had a script, I had the music, I had everything. I pitched it everywhere,” she shared during the Q&A. “I was told it was the best pitch anyone ever heard, but really — a woman — ultimately in my period in the ’90s and the early 2000s, the resistance to women working, to me working, was so great that I couldn’t get back to direct. That was unfortunate, but I feel that my intelligence was wasted trying to convince lesser intelligent studio heads to allow me to direct.”
She continued: “They asked me to come and help them cast movies at studios, which I did because obviously I was very good at producing. I just feel the resistance to women having power, the resistance to me having power, was very big and the resistance to allowing my intelligence to be helpful has been enormous and by people of lesser intelligence.”