In a career spanning over four decades, Sharon Stone has had over one hundred acting credits in film and on television. After modeling in television commercials and print advertisements, Stone made her film debut as an extra in Woody Allen's dramedy Stardust Memories (1980) and played her first speaking part in Wes Craven's horror film Deadly Blessing (1981). 

In the 1980s, she appeared in such pictures as Irreconcilable Differences (1984), King Solomon's Mines (1985), Cold Steel (1987), and Above the Law (1988). She had a breakthrough with her part in Paul Verhoeven's science fiction action film Total Recall (1990), before rising to international recognition when she portrayed Catherine Tramellin another Verhoeven film, the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992), for which she earned her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.

Stone's performance as trophy wife in Martin Scorsese's epic crime drama Casino (1995) earned her the best reviews of her career, the Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her other notable films include Sliver (1993), The Specialist (1994), The Quick and the Dead (1995), Sphere (1998), The Mighty (1998), The Muse (1999), Catwoman (2004), Broken Flowers (2005), Alpha Dog (2006), Bobby (2006), Lovelace (2013), Fading Gigolo (2013), The Disaster Artist (2017), Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019), and The Laundromat (2019).

On television, Stone has had leading and supporting roles in productions such as the ABC miniseries War and Remembrance (1987), the HBOtelevision film If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000), Steven Soderbergh's Mosaic (2017) and Ryan Murphy's Ratched (2020). She made guest appearances in The Practice (2004) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2010), winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for the former.

On September 29, 2001, Stone was hospitalized for a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which was diagnosed as a vertebral artery dissection rather than the more common ruptured aneurysm, and treated with an endovascular coil embolization.