NEED TO KNOW
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Sharon Stone opened up about her audition to play Laura on General Hospital
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Stone said the casting director left her with a bizarre remark
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Genie Francis was ultimately cast as Laura around that same time
Sharon Stone will never forget her audition for General Hospital.
Stone, 68, told the story of her thwarted audition for the iconic soap opera on the May 7 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. Kimmel, 58, asked Stone if she had ever been on a soap opera. Stone said that when she was “maybe 19,” she was living in New York and working as a model when she was called in to play Laura on General Hospital. The character had been played by Stacey Baldwin from 1974 to 1976.
Laura returned to the show as a rebellious teenager in 1977, played by the now-iconic Genie Francis. That is seemingly around when Stone would have auditioned for the part.
But, as Stone remembered it, at the time, General Hospital wasn’t sure what to do with the character. “And they were like, ‘Are we going to knock her off? We going to replace her?’ And they flew me out here,” she said. “I’d never been to California. And they flew me out here to audition to play Laura.”
Sharon Stone in 1988
Credit: Walt Disney Television Photo Archives/Walt Disney Television via Getty
The actress, who stars in season 3 of Euphoria, shared, “I’d done a lot of commercials at that point, but nothing else.” She went out to Los Angeles and did the audition.
“The lady called me in to discuss my audition, and she was the very old-school type of casting director who had the gigantic beehive and the cat-eye glasses, which were now down on her nose,” she remembered. “And she’s sitting at the desk, and she made me stand in front of her while she was on the phone. Then finally she got off the phone, and she looked over her glasses at me and said, ‘We’ll be sending you back.’ ”
Stone was disappointed. Then the casting director had one more remark to share with her. “She went, ‘You have no mystery,’ ” Stone said. “And I was like, ‘Huh?’ And I just didn’t know what to do with that.”
Kimmel said it was a “horrible thing” to say to someone, but Stone pointed out, “First of all, it doesn’t mean anything.”
Sharon Stone in April 2026
Credit: JC Olivera/Variety via Getty
She said that it seemed like the casting director wanted to “mind f—” her “because we don’t know what we’re doing, so we’re just going to put it on you.”
Stone went back to New York. “I went home to my roommate, and she was like, ‘What happened?’ And I told her, and she went, ‘Baby, you’re Technicolor in a black and white world.’ ” She thanked her for being “a good roommate.”
Kimmel said, “I feel you have a lot of mystery. I don’t know what she was talking about, that lady.”
Stone said, “I made a career on mystery.” Stone, who made her film debut in 1980’s Stardust Memories, is known primarily for playing mysterious women and femme fatales. She had her breakthrough in 1990’s Total Recall and rose to international fame for 1992’s Basic Instinct. In 1995, she played Ginger McKenna in Casino, a con artist and showgirl who married Robert De Niro’s Ace. She received an Academy Award nomination for the role.
But things turned out all right for Francis, 63, too. Once she was cast in the series, she was eventually partnered with Anthony Geary‘s Luke Spencer. Together, they became one of the most popular supercouples in all of soap operas, culminating in their 1981 wedding, which was watched by 30 million people. Though Francis has left the series multiple times since then, she’s appeared on the show regularly since 2015.
Read the original article on People