Sharon Stone has revealed that she was paid $13.5 million less than her co-star Michael Douglas for the award-winning film, Basic Instinct.
Back in 1992, the 65-year-old actress acted alongside the 78-year-old star in Paul Verhoeven's neo-noir erotic thriller which made nearly $353 million at the box office, per Metro.
In the movie - which has the well-known scene in which Stone uncrossed her legs during a police investigation - Douglas played detective Nick Curran, while she starred as romance novelist-turned-sensual murder suspect Catherine Tramell.
Recently, the Casino actress was honored at the New York Women In Film and Television’s 43rd annual Muse Awards alongside eight other women: Danielle Brooks, Janet Yang, Freida Pinto, and Sandra Lee.
During her appearance at the prestigious event meant to celebrate women in the industry, Stone disclosed that she earned a measly $500,000 paycheque for the famous flick.
"Michael Douglas made $14 million. Now, I was new. I was new and he was a very big star," she informed the crowd of mostly female film and TV execs, as cited by Page Six.
The Oscar-winning star also explained to the audience how she had faced disrespect from a line producer on the film who kept incorrectly referring to her as Karen throughout the "entirety of the film".
"Even at the Governor’s Ball [after the Oscars], he still called me Karen! And, I carried that humiliation really deeply within me - even though my name wasn’t on the poster," she said, per the outlet.
The Total Recall actress previously opened up about the pay discrepancy between her and her costar in an InStyle essay published last year.
Stone shared that she had a clause added to her contract that permitted her to keep her character's wardrobe, which included items from Hermès and other notable designers.
"People thought I was crazy, but the truth is I wasn't getting paid much compared to my male costar," she wrote. "I made $500,000; Michael made $14 million. So keeping my costumes was a really smart thing to do."
In addition to this, Stone candidly divulged on the Table for Two podcast that the film's infamous scene left her with severe consequences in her personal life such as losing custody of her four-year-old son.
"I lost custody of my child," she said, referring to her son Roan who she adopted in 2000 with former husband Phil Bronstein before their tumultuous divorce battle.
"When the judge asked my child - my tiny little boy: 'Do you know your mother makes sex movies?' Like, this kind of abuse by the system - that I was considered what kind of parent I was because I made that movie," she went on, per The Guardian.
"People are walking around with no clothes on at all on regular TV now and you saw maybe like a 16th of a second of possible nudity of me - and I lost custody of my child," she continued. "Are you kidding?"
Furthermore, the Silver actress also alleged in her memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, that the Basic Instinct director tricked her into exposing herself in the scene, which she only discovered at a screening of the finished movie.
"That was how I saw my vagina shot for the first time, long after I’d been told, 'We can’t see anything - I just need you to remove your panties, as the white is reflecting the light, so we know you have panties on,'" Stone wrote, as cited by Insider.