Gillian Anderson feels sex “adapts and changes” as she ages.

‘The X-Files’ actress, 56, has just released her book ‘Want’, which is a compilation of thousands of sexual fantasies she asked women to submit to her anonymously online.

She told The Guardian about how she has loved sex at all stages of her life: “For me, sex has never felt like a static entity, but rather something that adapts and changes as I grow and change, with every new phase and stage of my life.

“A huge part of this has always been in the thinking and the feeling, not just the doing.

“As an actor, there is an inherent permission at the core of my job to give myself over to an alternate reality, which is the very definition of fantasy.

“The women whom I embody, whose worlds I step into, also have inner lives, desires and fantasies, which are vital to understanding what makes them tick.”

Gillian, who stars in Netflix’s ‘Sex Education’ series, added her past sex symbol status now baffles her.

She told The Guardian she considers being voted sexiest woman by FHM magazine in 1996 “preposterous”.

After Gillian was catapulted into fame in 1993 playing FBI agent Dana Scully in ‘The X-Files’ she became a fixation of lads’ magazines.

She said about being made an object of lust: “It felt so preposterous to me. If you saw my life and where I am half the time, between work and set and kids and driving and drop-offs and pick-ups and all that sort of stuff – the fact that you’d end up with those pictures is just so.”

Mother-of-three Gillian gave birth to her first child Piper during the second season of ‘The X-Files’ and spent the rest of the series as a working mum.

She added about doing sexy photoshoots at the time: “(Those were) just part of the fantasy. It doesn’t feel like it represents me at all.”