Gillian Anderson Wants to Know Your Spiciest Sexual Fantasies

Gillian Anderson is calling on all women to divulge their most intimate sexual desires for her upcoming book.

Anderson is creating a book tentatively titled, "Dear Gillian," reminiscent of the classic 1970s bestseller "My Secret Garden," written by Nancy Friday, in which the author chronicled the anonymous sexual fantasies of women, something rarely talked about at the time, much less documented.

Most commonly known for her iconic '90s role as hard-nosed FBI agent Dana Scully on "The X-Files," the award-winning actor now plays a cheeky sex therapist, and divorced mother with her own spicy love life, on the hit series "Sex Education," which is currently streaming on Netflix. The British dramedy, which is set to begin production on its fourth season, highlights the complicated lives of students, parents and staff members while they navigate the world of sexual intimacy.

'Take that, Thunderdick'

Based on the first season of the show, it appears as if Anderson's life, at least in part, is imitating art. Her character, Dr. Jean F. Milburn, also embarked on her own literary challenge early on in the series.

"Yes, I'm writing a book, you f--k," Anderson's character comically said in season one.

(The "Sex Education" script requires the actor who played straight-faced Scully to say salty one-liners like, "Take that, Thunderdick.")

Anderson laid out her plea for women of all ages, genders and sexual identities to share their secretive sex lives in a Feb. 1 article she wrote for the Guardian newspaper.

"I want women across the world, and all of you who identify intrinsically as women now—queer, heterosexual and bisexual, nonbinary, transgender, polyamorous—all of you, old and young, whatever your religion, and married, single or other, to write to me and tell me what you think about when you think about sex," Anderson wrote.

The star assured all submissions will remain anonymous.

"As Friday wrote in her original introduction, 'In trying to understand what it is to be a woman, neither nationality nor class helps define us so much as the honesty of our feelings about ourselves and our desires,'" Anderson wrote. "Let’s create an era-defining text that cuts right to the heart of what it is to be a woman today. A book that will hopefully inspire women for generations to come."

The 1970s revolutionary book, she said, revealed "the sex we have in our head may be more stimulating than the physical nuts and bolts of any coupling, no matter how hot.

"Untrammelled by internalized social constraints, self-consciousness, or perhaps the fear of freaking our partner out, in our imagination we can indulge in our deepest, dirtiest desires," Anderson wrote.

'Let’s create an era-defining text that cuts right to the heart of what it is to be a woman today.'

The star hopes to facilitate another honest conversation with women about sex in the year 2023, half a century after Friday's book first hit American bookshelves in 1973. In researching her role as Dr. Milburn on "Sex Education," Anderson said she picked up a copy of Friday's "My Secret Garden" to read for the first time.

"Its unfiltered and painful honesty shook me," she wrote about the book. "What struck me also, with more than a little sadness, was the strong note of sexual frustration that many of these women in the '70s expressed (despite the revolution!). The experience of women was still such that what they wanted was not necessarily what they were getting. Many had never experienced an orgasm."

In Friday's book, women admitted they had never told another soul about their sexual fantasies, much less their partners.

"Again and again, these women confessed the fear that they alone had such fantasies, and uttered a heartbreaking cry of relief at being able to finally express them," Anderson wrote.

Anderson said she will be writing, and submitting, her own anonymous letter about her thoughts on sex for her new book.

"Fifty years on, the boundaries have been erased, no more so than in our own sexuality: BDSM, the modern meaning of gender, etc., anything is up for grabs," she wrote in the Guardian. "Are women still the silent sex? I suppose that is one of the things we’re going to find out. I’m hoping your voices from diverse nationalities and backgrounds will shed light on just how far we have come since 1973."

Anyone interested in sharing their sexual stories anonymously with Anderson may visit deargillian.com. Submissions will be accepted until midnight Feb. 28.