Los Angeles, Feb 17 : Hollywood star Sharon Stone says she learned "how to have a spine" after her iconic role in the 1992 movie 'Basic Instinct'. Stone told Instyle: "I was 32 when I got the part of Catherine Tramell in 'Basic Instinct'. It was probably as late as you could be in your career without a big break. But from the moment I read the script, I knew I was the right person for the role. It was an intellectually complex part, and I felt like I had a real grasp on it." Stone, who only made $500,000 on the picture while her co-star Michael Douglas took home $14 million, and made sure she was given the option to "keep the clothes" in her contract, femalefirst.co.uk. She said: "People thought I was crazy, but the truth is I wasn't getting paid much compared to my male co-star, so keeping my costumes was a really smart thing to do." The 'Catwoman' star said that she was asked to lose her knickers before filming the movie's famous interrogation scene as it was "reflecting the light". Stone said: "The cinematographer told me that they couldn't see anything. In those days, the monitors were much less sophisticated than they are now, so even when they played it back for me, I didn't see any issues." However, Sharon didn't realise that people could see up her skirt and thinks it would have been "much fairer and more reasonable" if someone had run it by her before it was filmed. She said: "It would've been a much fairer and more reasonable thing for them to have shown it to me alone first, but it was a part of the movie, and I'm sure they didn't want some new actress overreacting and telling them what to do." /IANS