No matter how shocking it may seem, Sharon Stone actually is 48 years old. And she also has very firm opinions on age, women and Hollywood. Yesterday, in London, arriving to the world premiere of her latest erotic thriller, the stunning actress was looking radiant, glamorous and extremely sexy.

Sharon told everyone how happy she was that the film had been shot in Britain rather than California, declaring that for women of a certain age, Europe offered respect.

"It's so different in Europe where you have only to walk down the street to remember you are a woman," she added. "In America we tend to erase women after 40 - and this is a period when I think women become the most interesting. They are sexual in a very different and alluring way."

Film-goers can make up their own minds after last night's premiere of "Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction", in which she appears again as bi-sexual femme fatale Catherine Trammel. It is 14 years since "Basic Instinct" and the notorious scene in which she uncrossed and re-crossed her legs while wearing a white mini-dress and no underwear.

The sexy blonde again raised some blood pressures yesterday by appearing before reporters, but not photographers, in a white fur coat, knee-high black leather boots, and nothing else. She said her film, which was shot in London's Docklands, Soho and the Gherkin building, proved that women over 40 can be sexy. "This film expresses that sexual allure in an unabashed and provocative way, in a way that is gritty and dangerous," she added.

It opens with her having sex in a speeding car in Canary Wharf with a man she called "the loveliest, most chivalrous person", former footballer Stan Collymore. Collymore's foray into acting comes after a career that might appeal to a Hollywood scriptwriter. The former England international once admitted to a "self-destructive curiosity" that led him to visit "dogging" sites, places where couples watch each other having sex in cars.

But the main male character, in the absence of original star Michael Douglas, is David Morrissey. Stone, who said Morrissey was "gorgeous and witty", said she was anxious to make the most of her sex scenes because it could be the last time she strips for the camera.