Michael Douglas claims explicit Basic Instinct sex scenes left Sharon Stone with a rash: 'I felt horrible'

Michael Douglas has lifted the lid on one of his most controversial roles.

In 1992, the famed actor starred alongside Sharon Stone in the R-rated erotic thriller Basic Instinct.

While it was an instant box office sensation, it also became one of the most scandalous films of the decade due to its violence, graphic sex, and nudity. 

Reflecting on the movie in his new memoir One Helluva Ride, Douglas, now 82, revealed that filming an intimate sex scene with Stone left the actress with a rash on her upper thigh.

'Sharon and I had vowed not to use body doubles,' he said of the explicit act, which took five days in total to shoot. 

'During the scene, Sharon started out wearing a patch over her crotch, a minimal gesture towards modesty. But she eventually decided to forgo it, saying, "Let's stop pretending. I'm nude, we all know it. Let's go."'

As they filmed the scene, which involved the stars making passionate love in bed together, Stone eventually complained that Douglas's stubble was hurting her.

'Despite what the finished film looks like, I can assure you that Sharon and I were never actually intimate in this scene,' he explained.

'I did, however, have to get my face close to some rather delicate areas. At one point my character was performing oral sex on her and it had to look real,' he continued.

'After a couple of takes Sharon said, "Please go easy. Your stubble is really scratching me!"

Douglas then looked closer and saw that Stone's upper thighs were 'completely red and chafed' and that he felt 'horrible' about it. 

To prepare for the role, Douglas lost 25lbs, but told producers that he drew the line at doing full frontal nudity.

Stone, however, did famously do full frontal nudity in her now iconic police interrogation scene.

In the scene, the actress crosses and uncrosses her legs while wearing a short dress and no underwear. 

Reflecting on the scene years later during an interview at the Taormina Film Festival in 2024, Stone said: 'It seemed like a scandal, and now it seems very, very ordinary.'

She continued: 'I think that now that women are writing, directing, producing, filming and more and more a part of filmmaking, films are less about men writing films about their fantasies of the way women are, and actresses are less asked to portray the male fantasy.'

Despite the moment turning Stone into an A-list sensation, the Academy Award nominee has maintained in the past that she was 'tricked' into exposing herself for the cameras.

In her memoir The Beauty of Living Twice, Stone described how she slapped Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven and stormed out of a screening of the thriller after discovering that her crotch was visible during the interrogation scene, despite her claims that Verhoeven had told her that it would not be.  

For his part, Verhoeven has vehemently dismissed her claims that she was taken by surprise in the leg-crossing scene. 

'Any actress knows what she's going to see if you ask her to take off her underwear and point there with the camera,' he said.