Actress Sharon Stone has claimed she used her intelligence to first persuade people to think she was “sexy”.
The 56-year-old said her career took off after she chose to appear in pornographic magazine Playboy in 1990.
“I decided because I was a very bookworm person that I had to use my intelligence of how to be sexy,” she told The Independent’s Radar magazine.
“So I was very good friends with the woman who was photo-editor of Playboy magazine and she was always saying that Hugh Hefner wanted me to be in Playboy.
“I thought, ’you know what, this would be an intelligent step for me because if I tell people that I’m sexy, they’ll think I’m sexy’.”
She went on to say that “five minutes” after the magazine was published she was offered a role in 1992 film Basic Instinct.
The erotic thriller caused a sensation when it was released as it contained a well-known leg-crossing scene in which she is apparently not wearing underwear.
Stone, whose character pays for sex in new film Fading Gigolo, insisted it is wrong to criticise the amount of nudity in movies.
“I don’t think that Hollywood is obsessed with sex,” she said. “I think that it’s ridiculous to pretend that everyone isn’t obsessed with sex. Isn’t it every 20 seconds that we think about sex?”
She added: “Bare skin is beautiful. I don’t think God was in the clothing business.”