When Sharon Stone first received the screenplay for the romantic comedy that would become All I Wish, out in theaters March 30, the actress was asked to play the mother of the film’s 25-year-old protagonist.

Stone had another idea.

After sitting on the script for about a month, the actress called filmmaker Susan Walter with her pitch. “I said, ‘I think it would be more interesting if I play the daughter,” Stone told Vanity Fair by phone last week, sounding animated several days ahead of her 60th birthday, and months after receiving critical acclaim for her captivating performance in Steven Soderbergh’s Mosaic.

“I just didn’t feel that having a 25-year-old woman who didn’t have her life together was that perilous. The stakes would be so much higher, and it would feel more important when the protagonist’s mom gets sick if we are older, because this is what happens in real life. This is the stuff we all really have to deal with, and think about, and come to terms with. I just feel there’s so much more comedy in the truth.”

Walter agreed to cast Stone as Senna, All I Wish’s flighty, fedora-wearing protagonist, a struggling wardrobe stylist. In turn, Stone offered to help the first-time filmmaker produce and find financing for the film—which co-stars Ellen Burstyn (as Senna’s mother), Tony Goldwyn (as Senna’s love interest), and Famke Janssen (as Senna’s former employer). According to the production notes, Walter toyed with the idea of updating the script to make the character and plot details what she believed to be more age appropriate for Stone. But Stone wanted to show audiences that 50- and 60-year-olds aren’t all arthritic A.A.R.P.-commercial cautionary tales.

Explained Walter, “[Sharon’s] aware that what we see on the big screen can become our reality . . . Sharon said, ‘Don’t explain it. Just let these characters be vibrant and alive and sexy. Just do it!’ Show people in their fifties doing amazing things, she said, and audiences will subconsciously take that on. Just by seeing Sharon on-screen doing these things, feeling these feelings, falling in love, being who she is, audiences will feel that way too.”

This mission statement—perfectly on point for the equality-focused Time’s Up moment—explains why All I Wish features Stone’s Senna waking up from a one-night stand, kicking out her no-name suitor, and helping herself to a breakfast of hand-rolled cigarettes. Stone wasn’t just up for enacting what Walter had her 25-year-old protagonist doing on the page, though. The actress—who had been craving a full-on comedy since working with Albert Brooks on The Muse in the late 90s— wanted to push each scene further. While filming one of several scenes featuring Senna driving a scooter, Stone suggested that Senna actually push the scooter up a hill after it doesn’t start, for an added bit of comic relief. Rather than simply fall off a bed in one scene, Stone upped the physical-comedy ante to bang into a wall as well. The actress didn’t just mightily sink her teeth into a competitive beach-volleyball scene—she filmed it while wearing a string-bikini top and a fishtail braid, looking better than any twentysomething.

“These are things that we actually do as normal people,” Stone explained. “Women don’t always have to act like a princess who sits on a sofa, wears nine-inch heels, and acts like a viper.”

Though the romantic comedy comes (spoiler alert!) with a happy, romantic ending, All I Wish doesn’t preach some kind of soul-mate mythology to its audience. Stone doesn’t seem to have the stomach for that Hollywood-movie nonsense anymore, and knows viewers don’t either.