Catherine Tramell is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the film Basic Instinct (1992) and its sequel Basic Instinct 2 (2006). Catherine Tramell, created by writer Joe Eszterhas, is played by Sharon Stone in both films. In Basic Instinct, directed by Paul Verhoeven, Catherine Tramell is a serial killer and love interest of detective Nick Curran; Basic Instinct 2 pairs her with the similarly troubled British psychologist Michael Glass. One European critic defined Catherine Tramell as "a mix between the classic femme fatale and the new psycho killers, one of the most evil characters ever created, on Hannibal Lecter's level." She was nominated to be a member of the American Film Institute's "Best Villains" list. Entertainment Weekly named Tramell one of the 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years. Appearances Basic Instinct Basic Instinct establishes Tramell as a beautiful, wealthy heiress and successful crime novelist who is connected to the violent stabbing death of a washed-up rock musician, Johnny Boz, who was found in his bed tied to the bed posts with a white silk scarf. She is subsequently investigated by San Francisco homicide detectives Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and Gus Moran (George Dzundza), who learn that Boz died in exactly the same manner as a character in Tramell's most recent novel. Tramell shows little emotion upon hearing of Boz's death, and under questioning by the police, behaves provocatively; in the film's most famous scene, Tramell recrosses her legs to show that she is not wearing underwear beneath her short skirt. Curran looks into Tramell's troubled history and links her to the deaths of her wealthy parents (who died in a boating accident), her counselor at UC Berkeley (who was also killed with an ice pick in an unsolved homicide), and her former fiancé, a famous boxer, who died in the ring. She also has a habit of befriending imprisoned murderers such as her girlfriend Roxy, who killed her brothers as a teenager, and Hazel Dobkins, an elderly woman who killed her husband and children for no apparent reason. However, when he confronts Tramell, she taunts him with knowledge of his drug addiction and his killing of two tourists on assignment while high on cocaine. Thinking that Tramell received the confidential information from an adversarial internal affairs investigator, Marty Nilsen, a violent Curran gets himself suspended and falls into a drunken stupor. After Nilsen is found dead,