Brought up in a small town, Stone won several local beauty contests as a teenager. She dropped out of college at age 19 to work as an Eileen Ford model, moving to Italy to do her photo shoots. She returned to New York in the late '70s to pursue an acting career. At an extras audition she was hand-picked by Woody Allen to appear as the "pretty girl on train" (as she was listed in the credits) in Stardust Memories (1980). She went on to land blonde-bombshell roles in a series of mediocre films throughout most of the '80s. Her big break came when she was cast in a supporting role opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the blockbuster Total Recall (1990), directed by Paul Verhoeven. Verhoeven was impressed with her performance and cast her in the lead female role in his next film, Basic Instinct (1992), in which she played a bisexual author and sexual adventurer. That film's massive success launched her into stardom.