After “Gilbert Grape”, Leonardo DiCaprio continues his impressive start to his film career with “Dead or Alive”. A western signed Sam Raimi in which the young actor exchanges a kiss with Sharon Stone, who did not leave him with a fabulous memory.
Dead or alive : duels in the sun
Admirer of the work of Sam Raimi, Sharon Stone imposes it with TriStar to direct Dead or alive, a western released in 1995 in which she plays the main character and on which she also officiates as a producer. In this cartoonish feature film, full of visual ideas, jubilant and which transcends many tropes of the genre, the actress lends her features to Ellen, a mysterious lone rider who lands in Redemption.
A small town where the tyrant Herod (Gene Hackman) reigns supreme, not hesitating to terrorize the inhabitants and encourage his gang members to pull the trigger. Every year, he also organizes a duel contest to reward the best shooter. A tournament in which Ellen absolutely wants to participate for a very specific reason. She will potentially have to face some of the most gifted and ruthless scoundrels in the West: Herod himself, his promising son nicknamed “The Kid” (Leonardo DiCaprio), the repentant criminal Cort (Russell Crowe), the high roller “Ace ” Hanlon (Lance Henriksen) or Sergeant Clay Cantrell (Keith David).
Pat Hingle, Gary Sinise, Roberts Blossom and Woody Strode complete the distribution of this commercial failure that was difficult for Sam Raimi to take. Her film, however, is full of many qualities, such as imposing Sharon Stone as an ultra-charismatic heroine and that of confirm the talent of Leonardo DiCaprio after Gilbert Grape but before Romeo + Juliet and Titanic.
Sharon Stone blown away by Leonardo DiCaprio
Impressed by the tests of the future star, Sharon Stone does everything to make it in the credits of Dead or alive. Quoted by Peoplethe actress explains in her memoirs entitled The Beauty of Living Twice :
In my opinion, he was the only one who came in and started crying, begging his father to love him while he was dying.
But the studio is obviously not so convinced, and does not want an actor who has just started his career. TriStar therefore invites the interpreter of Ellen to pay the stamp of the “Kid”. What she agrees to do. She tells :
“Why a stranger, Sharon, why do you shoot yourself in the foot all the time?” The studio said if I wanted it that bad, I just had to pay for it out of my own salary. That’s what I did.
If Leonardo DiCaprio would not have been insensitive to the charm of Sharon Stone, he did not however not appreciated kissing his playmate. The actor would have confided to the newspaper The Morning Call in 1995 :
Truth be told, it wasn’t great. She grabbed me by the back of my hair and put her lips on mine, before rejecting me. It didn’t feel like a real kiss.
It is in any case a real cinema kiss, which occurs to celebrate a victory before things go wrong.
