As cool sex therapist Dr Jean Milburn in Netflix’s Sex Education, it’s safe to say that Gillian Anderson captured viewers’ hearts with her unflinching honesty, open mind and endless words of wisdom when navigating life’s intimate moments.

And now off screen, the actor has invited women to write letters to her about their sexual fantasies as part of an empowering project that will chronicle the sex lives of women from around the world.

Inspired by Nancy Friday’s 1973 book My Secret Garden – a collection of women’s fantasies sourced through letters, tapes and personal interviews – Anderson is compiling open letters to publish anonymously in a new book that aims to be an “expansive and revelatory portrait of women’s sexuality and what it means to be a woman today”.

Want, set to be published by Bloomsbury in September, collects the letters of hundreds of women from around the world, all sharing their deepest fantasies. Introduced by Anderson, along with her own anonymous letter, the book reveals how women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally themselves – and are able to ask: what do I want?

Want: Gillian Anderson’s new collection of anonymous letters about sex is coming later this year