Sharon Stone has revealed that she paid Leonardo DiCaprio's salary on The Quick and the Dead when the studio didn't want to cast him.
"This kid named Leonardo DiCaprio was the only one who nailed the audition," Stone writes in her memoir The Beauty of Living Twice (H/T Insider). "In my opinion he was the only one who came in and cried, begging his father to love him as he died in the scene."
The Quick and the Dead is a revisionist Western movie directed by Sam Raimi that was released in 1995. Set in the late 19th Century, it follows "The Lady" (Stone) who rides into a frontier town ruled by a ruthless outlaw to join a deadly dueling competition in an attempt to exact revenge for her father's death.
Stone recalls the studio telling her, "Why an unknown, Sharon, why are you always shooting yourself in the foot?" despite the fact that DiCaprio had an Oscar nomination for What's Eating Gilbert Grape at this point. "The studio said if I wanted him so much, I could pay him out of my own salary. So I did," Stone writes. And so DiCaprio ended up playing "The Kid", a young man who runs a gun store, in his fourth big-screen role.
Stone's acting career spans four decades, including movies like the erotic thriller Basic Instinct and the Martin Scorsese crime drama Casino. She was last seen in Steven Soderbergh's Netflix movie The Laundromat and Ryan Murphy's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest prequel series Ratched.
If you've already seen The Quick and the Dead and need more viewing inspiration, check out our list of the best Netflix movies to watch right now.
