Sharon Stone was thrilled to play Lana Turner in a movie about her life. However, when Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas’ wife, got the job instead, Stone couldn’t help but be sad about it.
Sharon Stone was considered to play the late actor Lana Turner in a biopic.
Sharon Stone may have once been considered for the role of the late actress Lana Turner. TCM says that Turner was a rising star as an actor in the late 1930s. She made her debut in the feature They Won’t Forget.
From there, Turner’s career got even better in the 1940s. In the 1940s, she was in movies like “Honky Tonk” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which made her even more famous.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Turner was already a well-known star in her own right. But when she started dating a Los Angeles gangster named Johnny Stompanato, things went wrong in her personal life. Stompanato was secretly in love with Turner. He sent her expensive gifts and sweet phone messages under the name John Steele.
Turner tried to get away from Stompanato when she found out who he really was. But Stompanato wouldn’t let her. Instead, she used violence and fear to keep Turner in line.
After a few months of this rocky relationship, the couple finally broke up. Stompanato told Turner, Turner’s grandmother, and Turner’s daughter, Cheryl Crane, that he would kill them all. When Turner’s 14-year-old daughter heard this, she ended up killing Stompanato by stabbing him with a knife. Neither Turner nor Crane was charged with murder.
Sharon Stone lost her role as Lana Turner to Michael Douglas’ wife Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Stone said that she was handpicked to play Lana Turner by Turner herself.
I met Lana in her final years and liked her a great deal. She said if there was to be a film made of her life, I was her choice,
Sharon Stone once said according to FemaleFirst.
In the middle of the 2000s, a Turner film was almost made. Entertainment Weekly said in 2001 that Wayne Wang, who made the movie Wayne’s World, was going to direct the movie. By this time, Wayne had already decided that Stone would play Turner. Wang also thought about casting Antonio Banderas as Johnny Stompanato.
I told him, ‘You have to get rid of your Spanish accent. Johnny was a mobster from the Midwest,’
Wang said.
But things changed when film director Adrian Lyne was hired instead to run the movie. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas’ wife, was chosen by Lyne to star in the movie. It was said that Stone wasn’t too happy about not getting one of her dream jobs.
You can know your job, but it seems you have to be flavor-of-the-week,
Stone allegedly said regarding the casting news.
How Catherine Zeta-Jones felt about Sharon Stone being mad at her for being cast in the role.
In 2005, Zeta-Jones told IGN that she was going to be in a movie about Lana Turner’s life. Instead of Antonio Banderas, she would end up with Keanu Reeves, who played Neo in the movie The Matrix.
I will be doing it. Keanu Reeves is still on to it. I put myself on film just so I could get it in my head that the studio wouldn’t turn around half way through the movie and say, ‘She doesn’t look like her,’
Zeta-Jones said.
When it came to Stone, though, Zeta-Jones said she didn’t know much about how the actor really felt about the matter. But Zeta-Jones said that she had also wanted to be in a movie that Sharon Stone eventually got instead. So Zeta-Jones knew what it was like to be taken advantage of.
Supposedly, Sharon wanted to play Lana Turner [in the Johnny Stompanato movie]. And I know Sharon really well. And I dunno. But guess what? I wanted to be in Basic Instinct 2,
Zeta-Jones said.
