Sharon Vonne Stone is an American actress and painter. Known for primarily playing femmes fatale and mysterious women in film and television, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1990s. She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a nomination for an Academy Award. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1995 and was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2005.
Stone at the 2024 Berlinale
Stone at the Deauville American Film Festival in 1991
Stone at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival
Stone at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival
A femme fatale, sometimes called a maneater, Mata Hari, or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of literature and art. Her ability to enchant, entice and hypnotize her victim with a spell was in the earliest stories seen as verging on supernatural; hence, the femme fatale today is still often described as having a power akin to an enchantress, seductress, witch, having power over men. Femmes fatales are typically villainous, or at least morally ambiguous, and always associated with a sense of mystification, and unease.
The divine femme fatale of Hindu mythology, Apsara Mohini is described to have enchanted gods, demons and sages alike.
Salome in a 1906 painting by Franz von Stuck
Actress Theda Bara, in the film A Fool There Was
Femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson, played by Barbara Stanwyck, in the classic film noir Double Indemnity