Olivia Wilde (AFP photo)

Actress Olivia Wilde has taken aim at the media for turning candid comments she made about her sex life at a New York event into headline news, insisting it was all part of a performance art piece.

The TRON: Legacy beauty took part in Glamour magazine's These Girls event on Tuesday and appeared to openly discuss her lack of sex towards the end of her eight-year marriage to Italian prince Tao Ruspoli, who she divorced last year.

She told attendees, "I felt like my vagina died. Turned off. Lights out... And you can lie to your relatives at Christmas dinner and tell them everything on the home front is just peachy. But you cannot lie to your vagina."

Wilde revealed she even considered embarking on a same-sex love affair to experience "a soft kind of lesbian relationship, just gentle kissing and scissoring", but she dismissed the idea as soon as she met new boyfriend Jason Sudeikis late last year.

She confessed to falling "blissfully, hopefully and wildly in love" with the Horrible Bosses star, who she recently moved in with, and credited the comedian with giving her a new appetite for sex, revealing, "We have sex like Kenyan marathon runners."

However, Wilde took to her Twitter.com blog after the event to explain that her comments were all part of a performance art piece, and shouldn't be taken at face value.

She wrote, "The 'These Girls' monologues at Joe's Pub were not meant for publication, and, in context, were a celebration of LOVE, girls, and honesty. Sneaky recorders are everywhere these days, but performance art doesn't always translate accurately to tabloid interpretation."