Gillian Anderson wouldn't be "on the planet" if she didn't live by nine principles of her new book 'We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere'.
Gillian Anderson
The 'X-Files' actress has teamed up with her friend Jennifer Nadel on the tome and she admits she owes her life to the nine key principles of the tome, honesty, acceptance, courage, trust, humility, peace, love, joy and kindness.
Asked how the principles have changed her, she told the new issue of Red: "I wouldn't be alive I think, if it were not for them.
"[I want women to feel] that they are not alone. Getting honest is really important. I think, had I not found tools to help me out of that pain, or to show me that there were people out there who were on a similar journey, the combination of those two things most certainly have contributed to me still being on the planet."
And Gillian - who has daughter Piper, 22, with ex-husband Clyde Klotz and sons Oscar, 10, and Felix, eight, with former partner Mark Griffiths - thinks women should be supportive of the decisions made by other women because everyone is doing things that make them "valuable and valid" in their own right.
She said: "It should be OK for women to make the decision that they're deciding to give up work and go and be with their children, and that whatever becomes important to you can be okay to talk about. Any version of oneself is valuable and valid."
The 48-year-old actress learned a lot about her own self by playing tough detective Stella Gibson in crime drama 'The Fall'.
She explained: "There was something about playing her that actually kind of awakened me to the notion that [I could be both strong and powerful].
"That I'm masculine, so to speak, in the way that I am in my life, but that I can embrace that co-existing part of myself and it doesn't mean that I'm conforming to long-standing notions of how women should and shouldn't be, or dress."
Tagged in Gillian Anderson