Leonardo DiCaprio told E! He is reported to have thanked Sharon Stone “many times” for paying his acting salary in 1995 when the studio refused to cast him in Sam Raimi’s revisionist Western drama “The Quick and the Dead.” . DiCaprio was coming off his Oscar-nominated breakthrough role in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” at the time, and Stone was keen to work with the young star. She was adamant on getting DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in the film and was willing to pay for it.
“He said, ‘These are two actors I want to work with,'” DiCaprio recalled. “It’s amazing. She’s been a huge champion of cinema and giving opportunities to other actors, so I’m very grateful.
“I have thanked him many times,” he said. “I don’t know if I sent her an actual, physical thank you gift, but I can’t thank her enough.”
In “The Quick and the Dead,” Stone played a gunslinger who visits a frontier town and clashes with its leader (Gene Hackman). In his 2021 memoir, “The Beauty of Living Twice,” he revealed that he paid DiCaprio’s salary himself after studio TriStar Pictures refused to cast him (via Insider).
“This kid named Leonardo DiCaprio was the only one who made it through the audition,” Stone wrote. He further said that he had auditioned some teenage actors for the role of The Kid. “In my opinion he was the only one who came in and cried, begging his father to love him as he died at the scene.”
Stone recalled telling the studio, “Why are you, an unknown, Sharon, always shooting yourself in the foot?”
“The studio said if I wanted it that much, I could pay it out of my salary. “So I did,” Stone continued.
The encounter with the studio and the decision to pay DiCaprio himself partly inspired Stone to become a producer, where she could fight for talent she believed was worthy of the job.
Stone wrote in her memoir, “Getting a producer’s credit as an actress is often thought of in my business as a ‘vanity deal,’ meaning they pay you for the work but shut the fuck up.” Give and stay out of the way.” “I will not accept a vanity deal and will let them know that in advance. I say this is illegal and I like to work within the ambit of the law. “It takes a lot of peace and not a lot of joy on the other end.”
“The Quick and the Dead” debuted in 1995 along with other DiCaprio-starring features such as “The Basketball Diaries” and “Total Eclipse.” The following year, DiCaprio’s career peaked with the success of James Cameron’s “Titanic”. The Oscar winner is currently in theaters as the star of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”