So what about her film career? Any advice for her younger self there? “I would say don’t spend so much energy worrying about being typecast. If there is a hook, run with it. Then once you have gathered experience playing the femme fatale, you can use it as a platform for other things. I was so self-conscious about it, I kept turning down films which repeated that male fantasy thing.” “Yeah, I didn’t have a hang-up about nudity. I felt like I learnt a lot about different cultures in the way some of my work was responded to: the French, as long as my lipstick was perfect, were very relaxed about my nudity, the Italians would give you a standing ovation every time you flashed something, but the British were very uptight. They found the nudity titillating.” She has no interest in writing a memoir, either, “though some of the stories I could tell you about Hollywood you would find horrifying”. I get the impression that one of the reasons she enjoys being herself more now than “then” is that women like her more. This comes up when I ask how “the sisterhood” reacted to her in the days when magazines routinely described her as one of the most beautiful women in the world. Did she inspire envy? “I’m enjoying these later years much more now that that thing has subsided. I think it was there [the envy]. There was a point when I could have done with more support from women. There was a phase when I thought, women don’t like me.”
Italian beauty, and Mr. Skin Hall of Famer,Greta Scacchiis currently taking the UK theatre world by storm with her performance inTennessee Williams'The Glass Menagerie. In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Greta talked about the roles she's turned down, including the lead in Basic Instinct, as well as the fact that women didn't like her when she was considered a "sex symbol."
Greta took the world by storm with her hyper sexualized femme fatale roles in films like The Coca-Cola Kid and White Mischief, so it's no surprise that the interview drifted toward that line of questioning...
Are we talking about Basic Instinct here, a role she rejected? “That was very much to do with that. There was no way I could have coped with playing that role [which went to Sharon Stone]. I didn’t like the script and didn’t want to play a character who was essentially a male heterosexual’s lesbian fantasy. I thought that offensive.”
So no regrets when it became a blockbuster? "No, funnily enough."
It would be endlessly fascinating to see what Greta would have done with the role of Catherine Tramell, especially after her steamy turn in Presumed Innocent two years earlier.
As far as nudity goes, Greta's never been shy about showing some skin and attributes this to her upbringing...
The interview ends on something of a strange note as she remembers a time when women in particular were not her biggest supporters... 
Click here to read the full interview
Greta Scacchi Dishes on Basic Instinct, Her Comfort with Nudity, and More
Tagged in: Sharon Stone, Basic Instinct, Greta Scacchi, The Coca Cola Kid, The Red Violin, White Mischief, Presumed Innocent
