Sharon Stone was tricked into the most famous scene in movie history in 1992 — and she slapped the director, and became a star, and Hollywood never forgave her for talking about it.

A chair. Los Angeles, 1992. A woman crosses her legs, in a white dress, in an interrogation room, and the camera does not blink, and neither does she.

It is the most famous scene of the decade, and Sharon Stone, thirty-four, does not know, when she films it, that the camera will see what she was told it would not see.

Go back. Meadville, Pennsylvania, 1958. Sharon Vonne Stone. A girl with an IQ of 154, who goes to college at fifteen, and becomes a model, in New York, and then an actress, in Los Angeles, in small roles, for ten years, waiting for the role that never comes.

In 1990 she plays in Total Recall, and Hollywood notices, and in 1992 Paul Verhoeven casts her in Basic Instinct, as Catherine Tramell, a writer, a suspect, a woman who may or may not be a killer, and he tells her to remove her underwear, for the light, and tells her the camera will not see anything.

At the premiere, in a room full of people, Sharon Stone sees the scene for the first time, and she realises what the camera saw, and she walks up to Verhoeven, and slaps him, and leaves, and the film becomes a phenomenon.

Basic Instinct earns $352 million, and Sharon Stone becomes a star, overnight, at thirty-four, after ten years of waiting, and the scene that tricked her becomes the scene that made her, and she hates it, and owns it, both at once.

In 1995 Martin Scorsese casts her in Casino, and she wins a Golden Globe, and an Oscar nomination, and proves she can act, not just shock, and Hollywood does not know what to do with a woman who talks about how she was treated.

In 2001 she suffers a stroke, and a brain haemorrhage, and learns to walk, and talk, again, and in 2008 a judge gives her young son to his father, and Sharon says it is because of the movie, because of the scene, because a mother who crossed her legs on screen cannot be a good mother in court.

She paints, now, and she speaks, and she never apologises for the scene that made her, and broke her, and she tells young actresses what no one told her, in 1992, in that chair.

One scene. One slap. One stroke.

And a woman who was used, and became unforgettable anyway, and who made Hollywood pay, by refusing to be quiet about it.