Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Leigh Anderson is an American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer. Her credits include the roles of FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in the long-running and widely popular series The X-Files, ill-fated socialite Lily Bart in Terence Davies' film The House of Mirth, and Lady Dedlock in the successful BBC production of Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Among other honours, Anderson has won a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actress
Date of Birth9 August 1968
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
On The X-Files we shoot out of sequence every day, and sometimes we're shooting three different episodes at one time, so I'm used to that.
It's so funny, because right now I'm very tired and my brains a little dead, I tend to get very focused and serious. So, I'm probably coming off a lot more like Scully right now.
I can goof around with other people right up to when we shoot.
At the beginning Scully was much more sceptical than she is now.
To re-live these characters would be wonderful, because I know when the show ends it will be huge mourning process.
So much of this world is based on illusion, temporariness, and disposability that I think it's essential that our closest relationships reflect what is real.
Well, it seems to me that the best relationships - the ones that last - are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is... suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with
Motherhood has been enormously healthy for her. She's more secure.
David (Duchovny) and I and (creator/producer) Chris Carter have been excited about and determined to do the next 'X Files' movie. I think it would be a huge amount of fun to get together in kind of a reunion situation and just make a really good, really scary film.
I try in my life to follow my heart in terms of what moves me and what is important to me. I know what it feels like to do things that are soul-decaying, and a lot of the large aspects of life in Hollywood, in the stereotypical way, I find unbelievably soul-decaying, and I choose, albeit frustratingly to other people in my life, not to expose myself to too much of that.
To my detriment sometimes. I can be very controlled - too controlled. It spills over into my life, and that's when it gets difficult.
I think we were all coming in saying, you know, this will probably last for twelve episodes and then we'll all go home and start making movies.
I also respond very strongly to characters I have not done before ... something I can really sink my teeth into, and what's scary, and what terrifies me, because that's where I need to go.
I hadn't read the novel Bleak House . I'd read Dickens, but not this novel. I'd read several of his great novels, though I think it's different if you read them when you're young. You appreciate the storytelling, the stand-out characters, but you don't appreciate his ability as a writer, the depth of his humanity. He writes about everything, the rich, the poor, the prisons, the law courts, the country houses, the orphans and the families. I read the script for Bleak House and I was tentative about it. I'd told the producers, 'I don't do television.' But they charmed me and I did actually read the novel. I was captivated.