China ban gives Stone taste of bad karma

It doesn't do to upset the Chinese, as Sharon Stone (pictured) is discovering. Last week the actress gave an interview at the Cannes Film Festival in which she suggested that the earthquake in China, which has resulted in 65,000 deaths to date, might be the result of (bad) "karma" created by the country's policy towards Tibet. As a result, she is now facing a boycott of all her films in the country.

The 50-year-old actress, who is a Buddhist and describes the Dalai Lama as "a good friend", made her remarks during a brief interview with Cable Entertainment News of Hong Kong. She said: "I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you're not nice, the bad things happen to you?"

This went down badly with the Chinese state-run media, which ran a number of negative stories berating the actress. Now the owner of UME Cineplex, one of China's biggest urban cinema chains, has banned all her films from his cinemas.

However, the Hollywood Reporter points out that some other comments made by Stone were largely ignored by the Chinese media. In the same interview, she revealed that she had cried when she got a letter from the Tibetan Foundation asking her to help the quake victims. She added: "Sometimes you have to learn to put your head down and be of service, even to people who aren't nice to you. That's a big lesson for me."