Actress Sharon Stone has warned Hillary Rodham Clinton to stay out of the 2008 US presidential race, saying the New York senator and former first lady is too sexy to win back the keys to the White House.

Actress Sharon Stone

Stone, 48, who appears naked in a soon-to-be-released sequel to the provocative 1992 sex thriller Basic Instinct, said Senator Clinton had an intimidating sexuality that would cost her votes. 

"I think Hillary Clinton is fantastic, but I think it is too soon for her to run (for president)," Stone said in the latest edition of Hollywood Life magazine.

"A woman should be past her sexuality when she runs. Hillary still has sexual power and I don't think people will accept that. It's too threatening."

But while Stone wants the 58-year-old Senator Clinton to wait until her sexuality subsides, singer Madonna is urging her to "go for it" in 2008, even though the timing might not be right for Americans to put their trust in a woman president.

"I don't think now is necessarily her time, or the Democrats' time, but she should certainly go for it," Madonna reportedly told Out magazine.

US Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY)

"You've got to start somewhere in terms of a woman leading the US. In Europe and Asia and elsewhere, women have ruled over millions. It's not an abstract concept.

"But in America, men are still afraid. And I don't think women are too comfortable with the idea of a female in charge."

The Stone-Madonna comments come less than a year after the controversial biography The Truth About Hillary, in which journalist Ed Klein, a former editor of The New York Times magazine, claimed Senator Clinton's politics were shaped by a culture of radical feminism and lesbianism at Wellesley College in Massachusetts in the 1960s.

Klein's book also canvassed White House gossip suggesting that Senator Clinton and husband Bill Clinton did not have sex when he was president and she was first lady.

Was it true they slept in separate beds? Or, as was widely rumoured, was she a lesbian?

At the time of publication, Klein insisted that the first thoughts of many voters about Senator Clinton were about her sexuality and how she managed to tolerate her husband's chronic infidelity.

But earlier this month Senator Clinton's standing as a wronged wife cut no ice with actor Susan Sarandon, who said voters should not allow her to return to the White House as America's first female president because she did not vote against the war in Iraq.

"I find Hillary to be a great disappointment," Sarandon said.

"She's lost her progressive following because of her caution and centrist approach.

"It bothered me when she voted for the war. There were brave people who didn't. She's not worse than other politicians, but I hoped she would be better.

"What America is looking for is authentic people."