Sharon Stone is sharing details about her experience with online dating in recent years and to put it simply, it's been rough.
The "Casino" star, 65, opened up to U.K. newspaper The Times about how she met two men on dating apps and discovered that one was a convicted felon, while the other one appeared to be a heroin addict.
Stone said she met the the second man for a date at the garden of the Bel-Air hotel, where she was horrified to discover that he looked to be "clearly 20,000 heroin injections later than the picture he sent me,” she joked.
“I tell the waiter, ‘I’ll have a glass of water.’ He had a cocktail: absinthe or something. And I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t stay,'" recalled the Oscar winner.
Stone told the publication that she didn't hide her real identity on the apps. “I go on as myself. It’s not like I can fake it," she explained, although she said she was blocked initially by Bumble because it was assumed her account wasn't real.
The "Basic Instinct" star, who's been married and divorced twice, joined the apps in search of a connection rather than a hookup. “I didn’t want to just go on Tinder and f--- somebody. Do you know what I mean? It’s so easy to f--- somebody. You don’t have to go on Tinder; you go to f------ Coffee Bean. It’s not hard,” she explained.
She did, however, end up meeting two interesting men during the COVID pandemic, though she met neither in person. “I was almost like a therapist,” she said of her relationships with the men, both of whom were processing breakups with exes.
Stone's experiences with online dating eventually gave the actor the idea for a television show, so she stayed on the apps as research. “I mean, I wasn’t opposed to falling in love with somebody, but I thought it was going to be pretty unlikely," she said.
But love is exactly what Stone, who is mom to three adult adopted sons, Roan, 23, Laird, 18, and Quinn, 17, hopes to find in 2024. “This is the year that I want to fall in love — 100 per cent,” she said.
“I’d be absolutely ecstatic to have a relationship… It’s just that I spend so much of my time painting, the guy’s probably gonna (have to) pop out of the woodwork,” said Stone, whose visual artwork has been praised by critics.
The former “Ratched” star said she became choosier about the men in her life since she became a mom. “I think being a parent made me more thoughtful about who I would date. Once you recognize that the decisions that you make impact someone else… “ she explained.
But as for what’s she looks for in a partner, Stone makes it a point to avoid a checklist.
“I don’t look for anything. I’ve never looked for anything. Because I don’t think that’s what happens. You’re standing somewhere, someone walks up and starts talking to you and you turn around and think, ‘What?’ And the next thing you know, two years have gone by.
“You don’t look for a list and then your list arrives,” she added. “That’s what people do who don’t have relationships. So that they can comfort themselves with the fact that they don’t have a relationship and feel that they’re actively making an effort towards that happening in their lives.”