Cattrall's 'Sexual Intelligence'

After five Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe win for portraying the sexually provocative Samantha Jones on "Sex and the City," Kim Cattrall seems to have learned a few things.

She passes that knowledge on in her new book and HBO documentary, "Sexual Intelligence."

"I'm not a sex therapist. I've never purported to be," she tells The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler. "I never would want to have that responsibility. But what I do have is a platform to talk about sexuality, so I can bring the experts."

This lush coffee table book is the actress' follow-up to "Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm." And it is the tie-in to a 90-minute HBO special of the same name.

"I think everybody has questions about sexuality, but it's scary to voice them," she says. So Cattrall explores the mysteries and origins of sexual desire, helping to explain what turns people on and why.

Cattrall writes in the introduction: "How do we navigate the mysteries of sex? We say we are swept away, possessed and overtaken — all of which acknowledge the force of desire but never its logic. Is it possible to develop a kind of sexual intelligence, one that can deepen our pleasure and give us greater awareness of ourselves?"

"One of my favorite points was this chemical called Oxytocin, which is released when you get attracted to someone, this chemical, you build up sort of a tolerance to it after a five-year period," she says. "All the adage of the seven year itch, we've discovered it's the five-year itch that takes seven years to scratch, because that's when you build up immunity. You literally are drugged by your lover."

She spends a lot of time covering the topic of desire. "We wanted to take it from a female and male point of view," she says. "And then we wanted to go to the physicality of desire, what a man goes through, what a woman goes through. Then we wanted to go into more of the psychology of it and the biology, and then, the fantastical and then, hopefully, the joining together of the physical and the emotional and the spiritual."

Complementing the text are more than 200 lush color illustrations and photographs, including images shot specifically for the HBO documentary, as well as paintings, erotic artifacts, and photographs of the human body.

For the documentary, Cattrall spent time in various cultures around the world looking at how they view sex. One of those places is Pompeii.

"It was interesting to go back in time and see where nature and culture really were colliding, especially with sexuality," she says. "Going to Pompeii, in particular, was fascinating because there, it was so openly celebrated and worshipped."

"Sexual Intelligence" is scheduled to air in mid-November 2005. It is the first documentary Cattrall has produced as founder and co-partner, with Amy Briamonte, of Fertile Ground Productions.