Ageless beauty

The movie also deals with a not-so-good looking guy become an object of desire for many women. Do you think that happens in real life?

I never knew I was hot or could be beautiful until I saw Basic Instinct, and I was so shocked when I saw how pretty they made me. I thought, ‘Wow! That’s awesome!’ And that’s when I realised I could play hot parts. I didn’t start out being the hot girl. People used to say they couldn’t hire me because I wasn’t hot and wasn’t sexy. And then I learned how to be hot. Until then I was a nerd—the clever girl. But once I learned how to play the hot girl, I was typecast.

Fading Gigolo instills hope of finding love at an old age. Do you think you have succeeded at everything in life?

I don’t care if I fail, because what’s failure? I failed at some of the biggest things in my life. I failed in my health, I failed in my marriage, I failed in everything, and I’ve picked myself up and moved on. I was really lucky not to die, so it feels fantastic to be older and alive and to be playing older and alive people.

Would you say that you have stepped into a new stage in your career with movies like Fading Gigolo and Lovelace a little earlier?

That’s the best thing about being an older lady. I’m playing a mom, a career woman. I’m in another phase of life, I can play all kinds of different parts that I might not have been considered for before. I feel like another door has opened, that there’s another room of possibilities. It’s wonderful.

Nobody recognised you in Lovelace, and now you’re back to being Sharon Stone in Fading Gigolo.

It’s funny, because when I play this character everybody thinks I am playing something closer to myself. But, in fact, I totally transformed myself to play this character. I didn’t know how to go around looking like this.
It is more fun to continue to look glamorous and closer to that part, but obviously I’m not going to go out and look more like that character, Dorothy Boreman (Lovelace), because I don’t want to! In Fading Gigolo, I play a character very different from what I am. I’m a grown-up lady, I feel certain that I’m going to play adult characters, mothers and ultimately grandmothers. I am sure that I have gracefully surrendered all the things of youth.

How do you still manage to be in such great shape? There has to be a secret.

I believe in the saying— Dance like nobody is watching. And I dance hard, until I sweat which I think is very good for the mind and body. Earlier, I would just do pilates, but now I have also joined the gym. Now that I have hit 50, I’ve felt that I’ve needed more muscle tone and I started using more weights, and hence joined the gym.

You have been in showbiz since the past 30 years, and have not yet gone under the surgical knife…

I can’t tell you how many doctors try to sell me a face lift. I’ve even gone as far as having someone talk me into it, but when I went over and looked at pictures of myself, I thought, ‘What are they going to lift’? Yes, I have come close—but frankly, I think that in the art of aging, well there’s this sexuality to having those imperfections.
If you have things that you want to fix, you should go right ahead and fix them. I don’t think there is anything wrong with cosmetic surgery at all. I think it’s great. But I don’t think it’s alright to distort yourself. You can’t treat an illness with cosmetic surgery, and that’s why it would be great if there were qualified therapists in plastic surgeons’ offices, and that people would go through a therapeutic meeting before plastic surgery.

Unlike most actors, you have aged gracefully.

There was a stage in my 40s, when I went into the bathroom with a bottle of wine, locked the door, and said, ‘I’m not coming out until I can totally accept the way I look right now. I examined my face in the magnifying mirror, and I looked at my body and I cried and cried and cried. But eventually, I moved on realising, ‘I’m very happy about being a grown woman’. I think there’s a lot of sexuality, glamour, allure and mystery to being a woman that you just don’t have when you’re young.

What do you think about dating now?

Men expect that they’ll give you their phone number and you’re going to pursue them. I think that what has happened in the modern dating world is, that men expect to be pursued. Who wants that kind of a man? I want a man who still has his man card.