Jon Hamm with Sharon Stone
"We've always had this odd connection where I look at you and I think, I've gotta figure this guy out," Sharon Stone told Jon Hamm when he paid her a visit at her home earlier this month. The two actors are birthday twins, both born on March 10th, but that's perhaps the least of their many symmetries, which range from shared traumas to overlapping television projects. When they got together in Beverly Hills, Hamm had just read Stone's revealing memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, which details her life before, and recovery from, a stroke suffered in 2001. In the ensuing years, Stone has kept busy in film, television, philanthropy and, most recently, art making, having just opened an exhibition of her paintings, on view until January 15th, at the C. Parker Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut. "The fact that I am painting is nothing short of a miracle," Stone said. "The fact that I sold two paintings to the neurological center where the doctor who saved my life works, for half-a-million bucks, is nothing short of a godsend." As they caught up in Stone's home art studio, the pair had a wide-ranging conversation about their upbringings, losing loved ones, and working with visionaries like Martin Scorsese, Gene Hackman, and Robin Williams.
