Leonardo DiCaprio says he’s thankful for Sharon Stone’s generosity and calls her a “huge champion of cinema.”

 Sharon Stone personally paid Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe’s salaries for The Quick and the Dead , showing her support and belief in their talent.

 DiCaprio expressed his gratitude towards Stone for her generosity and credited her as a champion of cinema who gives other actors opportunities.
 Stone’s intuition about DiCaprio, Crowe, and director Sam Raimi proved spot on, as all three have gone on to achieve great success in Hollywood.

Sharon Stone felt her ideal co-stars for the 1995 revisionist western The Quick and the Dead were Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. When TriStar hesitated to cast them, she took matters into her own hands: she paid their salaries. In a recent conversation with E! News, while promoting Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, DiCaprio recalled Stone’s kind gesture, noting how thankful he was for her generosity:

“I’ve thanked her many times. I don’t know if I sent her an actual, physical thank you gift, but I cannot thank her enough.”
The Academy Award-winning actor went on to praise Stone, calling her amazing, before adding:
“She said, ‘These are the two actors [DiCaprio and Crowe] I want to work with.’ It’s incredible. She’s been a huge champion of cinema and giving other actors opportunities, so I’m very thankful.”
The Casino actress had seen DiCaprio in Lasse Hallström’s 1993 drama What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, where his portrayal of an intellectually disabled teen named Arnie earned the then-19-year-old DiCaprio an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Despite that incredible achievement, the studio questioned Stone as to why she would want to cast an unknown actor in the film.

Stone wrote about the incident in her 2021 memoir The Beauty of Living Twice (via Insider):
“This kid named Leonardo DiCaprio was the only one who nailed the audition, in my opinion: he was the only one who came in and cried, begging his father to love him as he died in the scene. The studio said if I wanted him so much, I could pay him out of my own salary. So I did.”

Sharon Stone Bet on Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, and Sam Raimi (and Won)

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As a producer for The Quick and the Dead, Stone also pushed for Crowe’s participation in the film after seeing him in the Australian film Romper Stomper (which tells the story of a neo-Nazi group in Melbourne) and for Raimi to helm the film. Raimi’s previous films (most notably the Evil Dead franchise films) were considered D-list movies by the studio and prompted hesitancy.

While The Quick and the Dead received mixed reviews, Stone’s intuition about DiCaprio, Crowe, and Raimi proved spot on. DiCaprio has become one of the most revered actors in Hollywood, earning an Academy Award for The Revenant, and delivering powerful, and critically acclaimed, performances in films like Titanic, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, and The Wolf of Wall Street. He currently stars in Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which is expected to be a major awards season contender.

Following his role in The Quick and the Dead, Crowe earned praise for his roles in films like L.A. Confidential, The Insider, Gladiator (which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor), A Beautiful Mind, 3:10 to Yuma, Cinderella Man, and American Gangster.

Raimi, best known for his work in horror and his Super-Man trilogy, is one of the most successful directors of our time, with his films grossing over $4 billion at the global box office. His most recent directorial effort, the MCU’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, grossed a total of $955.8 million worldwide.