Sharon Stone had to become the best quick draw in America to make “The Quick and the Dead” because there were no women to double her.

“I had to become the best quick draw, and because there were no more female quick draws in America when we made the movie, I couldn’t have a stunt double.”

Sharon Stone was 36, fresh off Basic Instinct, and using every bit of pull she had to get The Quick and the Dead made the way she wanted it.

She co-produced. She threatened to walk if the studio didn’t hire Sam Raimi, who they considered a B-movie director. She asked to be billed below Gene Hackman to elevate the project.

She fought for a then-unknown Leonardo DiCaprio to play The Kid after the studio refused him, and when they still said no, she paid his salary out of her own pocket. DiCaprio has thanked her publicly for it more than once. She also pushed for Russell Crowe after seeing him in the 1992 Australian film Romper Stomper.

The cast trained for more than 3 months with Thell Reed, a real fast-draw world champion and weapons master who’d worked on Tombstone. Reed aged the guns by dipping them in chlorinated pool water at his house so they’d rust on screen.

The no-double decision spread. “All of the men on the set were like, ‘what do you mean she’s not doubling?’ And it became this quick fire that went through the set. And they’re like, ‘well, then we’re not doubling either.’ So everybody on the set learned a quick draw. Everybody did their own stunts, and it was really something.”

The film opened in February 1995 and flopped. It made around 18 million dollars against a budget north of 32 million. That same year Stone won the Golden Globe for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy for Casino.

The Quick and the Dead has since become a cult favorite. The story of how she made it has been retold in her 2021 memoir The Beauty of Living Twice and now on Harper’s Bazaar’s Building Character series.

Hackman, who played the villain Herod, died in February 2025 at 95.