But the John Kerry who flip-flopped his way to defeat last year was not the man she knew, Fonda lamented, adding, "I don't know what happened [to him] in the interim."

Mystified over the change, the radical actress recalled that in the old days, Kerry "seemed to be a human being who was in touch with his core person."

The Barbarella sex pot-turned-feminist crusader offered a more harsh assessment of Kerry's campaign abilities last month.

"Men who show compassion or try to make peace are ridiculed as 'girlie men' or, like John Kerry, as wimps," she told an audience at Montana State University.

Editor's note: