Her other notable films include Sliver (1993), The Specialist (1994), The Quick and the Dead (1995), Catwoman (2004), Broken Flowers (2005), Alpha Dog (2006), Bobby (2006), Fading Gigolo (2013), The Disaster Artist (2017), Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019), and The Laundromat (2019).

[11][12] Stone said that she and her sister were both sexually abused as children by their maternal grandfather, in an interview to The New York Times in March 2021, while promoting her memoir The Beauty of Living Twice.

(1984), and T. J. Hooker (1985); played a starlet who breaks up the marriage of a successful director and his screenwriter wife in the drama Irreconcilable Differences (1984), opposite Ryan O'Neal, Shelley Long and a young Drew Barrymore; and starred as a resourceful woman teaming up with a fortune hunter (played by Richard Chamberlain) in the action-centered King Solomon's Mines (1985) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986), a light, comedic take on the Indiana Jones film series,[23] which were poorly received by critics and audiences.

In Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990), a science fiction action film opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stone played the seemingly loving wife of a construction worker.

In another Verhoeven film, the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992),[6] she took on the role that made her a star, playing Catherine Tramell, a brilliant bisexual and alleged serial killer.

[32] In 1993, Stone played a femme fatale in the erotic thriller Sliver, based on Ira Levin's eponymous novel about the mysterious occurrences in a privately owned New York City high-rise apartment building.

The film was heavily panned by critics and earned Stone a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actress but became a commercial success, grossing US$116.3 million at the international box office.

In 1994, Stone appeared as the wife of an architect opposite Richard Gere in the drama Intersection, and as a woman who entices a bomb expert she is involved with into destroying the criminal gang that killed her family, alongside Sylvester Stallone, in the action thriller The Specialist.

She served as a producer on the film and had some creative control over the production;[35] she chose director Sam Raimi, after being impressed by his work on Army of Darkness, and co-star Russell Crowe after watching Romper Stomper.

[39] Stone portrayed the mistress of a cruel school master in the psychological thriller Diabolique (1996), a woman waiting on death row for a brutal double murder in the drama Last Dance (1996), and a biologist in the suspense film Sphere (1998).

[40][41] In 1998, Stone also lent her voice for the successful animated film Antz,[42] and played the mother of a 13-year-old boy suffering from Morquio syndrome in the drama The Mighty, which garnered a positive critical response.

In 2000, Stone played a lesbian trying to start a family, opposite Ellen DeGeneres, in the HBO television film If These Walls Could Talk 2 and starred as an exotic dancer, alongside Billy Connolly, in the comedy Beautiful Joe.

While she was recognized by Women in Film with her second Lucy Award for her performance in If These Walls Could Talk 2,[39] Beautiful Jo premiered on cable television instead of receiving a theatrical release in North America.

[59][60] Her next film release was Jim Jarmusch's dramedy Broken Flowers (2005), in which Stone took on the role of a grasping and overly eager closet organizer who re-connects with a former womanizer (played by Bill Murray).

[61] Unlike her previous few film outings, Broken Flowers was met with critical acclaim, upon its premiere at Cannes,[62] where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or and won the Grand Prix.

Stone appeared in Nick Cassavetes's crime drama Alpha Dog (2006), opposite Bruce Willis, playing Olivia Mazursky, the mother of a real-life murder victim; she wore a fatsuit for the role.

[72] Stone took on the role of a clinically depressed woman in the independent drama When a Man Falls in the Forest (2007), which premiered in competition at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival where it was nominated for the Golden Bear.

Entertainment Weekly included in a review such descriptions of her performance as a "great presence", and having "had to revive her best [...] tone to sell hokey lines" in a series it described as "mawkish and overwrought".

[79] Both films were released in limited theaters to a decent critical reception; Glenn Kenny, in his review for Fading Gigolo, found Stone to be "splendidly understated" in what he described as "a New York story through and through [...] often funny, sometimes moving, occasionally goofy as hell".

[80] In 2014, she starred as an actress-turned-publisher, opposite Riccardo Scamarcio, in the Italian dramedy A Golden Boy (Un ragazzo d'oro), directed by Pupi Avati,[81][82][83] and portrayed America's first female Vice President in the TNT action drama series Agent X, which only aired for one season.

[90] James Franco's biographical comedy The Disaster Artist (2017), which featured Stone as Iris Burton, the agent of actor Greg Sestero, was a critical and commercial success, and was chosen by the National Board of Review as one of the top ten films of 2017.

Maureen Ryan of Variety felt that the actress "displays terrific range and depth" and "holds the screen with effortless charisma",[92] and Nick Schager of The Daily Beast wrote that "Stone's turn is something close to masterful.

In Netflix's psychological thriller series Ratched (2020), a prequel to Miloš Forman's 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest developed by Ryan Murphy, Stone portrayed a wealthy heiress who hires a hit man to kill a doctor for disfiguring her son.

[102] For her leading roles in erotic and adult-themed feature films such as Basic Instinct, Sliver, and The Specialist, Stone cemented what was described as a "tough-talking, no-underwear, voyeuristic, cool-as-ice, sex symbol" status during the 1990s.

[104] She graced the June–July 1986 cover of French Vogue, and to coincide with the release of Total Recall, she posed nude for the July 1990 issue of Playboy, flaunting the muscles she had developed in preparation for the film.

In 1993, she appeared in Pirelli's commercial, Driving Instinct,[106][107] in 2005, became the face of Dior's Capture skincare line,[108] and in 2016, starred with Paul Sculfor in Airfield's (de) Fashion Is a Lovestory short film.

[119] On January 28, 2005, Stone helped solicit pledges for $1 million in five minutes for mosquito nets in Tanzania,[120] turning a panel on African poverty into an impromptu fundraiser at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Many observers, including UNICEF, criticized her actions by claiming that Stone had reacted instinctively to the words of Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, because she had not done her research on the causes, consequences, and methods of preventing malaria.

[121][122] Stone was criticized over her comments in an exchange on the red carpet with Hong Kong's Cable Entertainment News during the 2008 Cannes Film Festival on May 25, 2008.

[130] On September 29, 2001, Stone was hospitalized for a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which was diagnosed as a vertebral artery dissection rather than the more common ruptured aneurysm, and treated with an endovascular coil embolization.