Actor Sharon Stone has sometimes gone to extreme lengths to immerse herself in a movie scene like she did in the feature Casino.
But on the set of the film Alpha Dog, she was pushed a little too far. And her co-star ended up physically paying for it.
Sharon Stone starred in the movie ‘Alpha Dog’
Alpha Dog was a movie directed by The Notebook filmmaker Nick Cassavetes. It was loosely based on a real-life crime where a couple of drug dealers plan a kidnapping that soon goes awry. The 2006 feature starred an ensemble cast that included late actor Anton Yelchin, Justin Timberlake, and Sharon Stone. The movie saw Yelchin portraying Zack Mazursky, the victim of the kidnapping. Stone played Yelchin’s mother Olivia Mazursky.
Stone came across the role when Cassavetes sent her the script. Initially, Cassevetes wasn’t thinking about who was going to be in the film when penning the script. But soon Stone would pop into his mind, and he felt that Stone would fit the part.
“The character is an Earth mother who is a little ‘too much,’ and I knew it was something that Sharon might do. After Sharon signed on, we had the building blocks of what we were going to do,” Cassavetes once said according to Made in Atlantis.
After she was given the material, Stone immediately connected to it and put a lot of thought into her role.
“From the moment I read the script, I looked at this part from two perspectives—from the perspective of a grown woman who is a parent, and from the perspective of a teenager, having grown up knowing people like this and having struggled through the experience of being put in difficult situations as a teenager,” Stone said. “Also, it’s an incredible honor and journey to be able to play someone like her and tell a story like this. I knew we were in good hands with Nick and that he would bring a great deal of integrity.”
Sharon Stone once made her co-star bleed after losing it in ‘Alpha Dog’
Stone put as much thought into portraying the character as she did trying to understand her. To do the role justice, the Basic Instinct star felt she had to investigate herself a little as well.
“During my research to play Olivia, I asked myself every horrific, tough, real question I needed to ask to play this part,” she said.
Stone’s method paid off, as Cassavetes felt the actor brought some much-needed intensity and energy to the movie. But the intensity that came with Stone sometimes took an emotional and physical toll on, not only the actor, but those around her.
There was a scene in the film where Stone’s Olivia faces off against one of her son’s kidnappers. The attacker, played by Ben Foster, was supposed to be hit by Stone. But pretending to hit someone in a movie was easier said than done.
“I was trying to hit him without hurting him, but to make it work for the scene. And he just wouldn’t let me,” Stone once said on Artisan News Service.
But Foster didn’t want Stone to just fake-punch him. According to Stone, her co-star felt the scene needed to look as raw and aggressive as possible. After getting frustrated with the scene and her co-star, Stone held nothing back.
“I was doing the scene, and he really came into me. He forced me to aggress him and he forced me to hit him. He just kept pushing me and pushing me and I just lost it. He made me hit him until it broke my heart. It was so awful and his nose started to bleed,” she remembered.
How Ben Foster reacted to Sharon Stone hitting him
Even after the director yelled cut, Stone was still shaken by the scene. But Foster reassured the Golden Globe-winner that she didn’t need to worry. It was all for the sake of the craft.
“I just looked at him like, ‘What have you done?’ And I got him ice. He’s like, ‘Honey, it’s a movie. And what we’re doing is so much more important than that.’ I looked and I realized we are in this so deep. We’re so dedicated, and we’re so dedicated to this kid, and his parents, and what happened. I was just so moved by that,” she said.
