Sharon Stone

Sharon Stone is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner, and Academy Award nominee, having starred in such films as Basic Instinct, Casino, and Sliver.

A self-described "ubergeek" who couldn't get a date to her high school prom, Sharon Stone proved that brains (an IQ of 154) were certainly no impediment to forging a career in the entertainment industry, especially when capitalizing on naturally blonde good looks as a fetching piece of "eye candy" in movies both good and bad. The former beauty pageant contestant and Ford model made her film debut with a non-speaking part as a beautiful woman fleetingly glimpsed from a moving train in Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories" (1980) and then survived more than a decade of mostly mediocre parts to claw her way to stardom. A journalist's dream, she is one of the best interviews in Hollywood, talking smart, tough and funny (she once described former beau Dwight Yoakam as less appealing than a "dirt sandwich"), and bringing back an old-fashioned, high-octane glamour to her role as a "movie star." Despite demonstrating considerable range as an actor, Stone has shown her true genius to be self-invention, creating a persona to rival that of stars like Joan Crawford and Betty Davis from a more style-conscious, bygone era.

Sharon is also known for raising $1 million in just five minutes to help prevent malaria in Tanzania, publicly supporting an AIDS research institution back when that would have been a career-killing move, and becoming a minister so that she could help her homosexual friends gain access to their lovers in the hospital. For Sharon, celebrity has been a tool that she's used to help as many people as she can, both in her local community and across the globe and because she has approached each situation from an integral, comprehensive, and embracing viewpoint, she has done admirably at "touching on all the bases" for each endeavor, and therefore helping each one succeed as much as possible. And she was doing it years before activism became chic amongst the Hollywood elite, almost a full decade before Bill Gates, Angelina Jolie, and Brad Pitt began making headlines for their philanthropic work around the world.