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
I was a good liar as a child.
By moving to London I removed myself from the madness of the entertainment industry. I love the city and the culture, and it was an opportunity to bring my children up in a more sane environment.
I simply cannot fathom the horrors of being enslaved, and the thought that children are ripped apart from their families and used year in and out for sex and hard labor under the threat of violence and death breaks my heart.
I love it when women come up to me and tell me I'm a positive influence on their lives and the lives of their young daughters. That's a great feeling.
In my case, I was born to parents who were very young, and I don't think they were entirely ready to have a child. My dad was going to college and working two or three jobs at the same time, and my mum was working and going to school.
There are so many shocking things. Is it more shocking that there are children sold into slavery in every city in the world and right under our noses or that there are villages in Nepal where there are no children left because they have all been kidnapped for sex trafficking, or that there are generations of slaves in some countries where indentured slavery passes from generation to generation and that kids grow into adults not knowing that another world - another life - exists?
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.
In England, it's much easier to flip between doing television and film. It doesn't ruin one's career the way it sometimes does in America. I had to take that on faith, but from the moment I started working on it, it was the best fun I'd had in a really long time.
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.
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.
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.