Gillian Anderson
born: 09-08-1968
birth place: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Anyone who thinks that acting in the same TV series
for nine years straight might render an actress typecast
needs only to look at Gillian Anderson to have a serious
re-think. Although she is indisputably best known for
her iconic role as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully from
‘The X-Files’ (1993), she is also an accomplished
actress of the big screen and theatre.
Born in Chicago, Illinois on 9 August 1968, Europe’s
year of revolutions, Anderson’s mother Rosemary was a
computer analyst, and her father Edward Anderson owned a
film post-production facility house. Very soon after
Anderson was born, her parents moved to Puerto Rico,
where they lived for 15 months, before relocating yet
again, this time to England. Anderson spent her
childhood growing up in the leafy suburbs of North
London, where the family lived in Stamford Hill and
Crouch End at various times, before finally settling in
Haringay, where her father enrolled for a course at the
London Film School. When Anderson was only 11 years old,
the family moved back to America, where they settled in
the town of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Anderson attended school at Fountain Elementary, then
City High-Middle School, where her talent was quickly
recognized, such that she received a thorough grounding
in the humanities on the faculty’s gifted students
program. But she was a troubled adolescent, by all
accounts, and it is interesting to speculate whether she
would actually have preferred to remain living in
England. At high school, Anderson was mocked and teased
because of her English accent, and she has commented in
various interviews that she felt totally out of place in
the American Midwest. She cemented her “outsider” status
still further by dying her hair in outlandish shades,
having her nose pierced, and even, at one stage, joining
a punk band. Anderson’s entries as “Most Bizarre”,
“Class Clown” and even “Most Likely To Be Arrested” in
one of her high school year books says it all. The
tempestuous teen almost turned the last prediction into
a self-fulfilling prophecy when she was apprehended on
graduation night, and caught trying to jam up the doors
of her high school by filling up the locks with glue.
As a youngster, Anderson aspired to becoming a marine
biologist, but this career plan was sidetracked. By a
curious stroke of fate, she instead discovered the cure
for her teenage angst when she enrolled in a community
theatre program and began acting at high school.
Anderson subscribes to the philosophy that “everything
happens for a reason”, making it appropriate that the
trials and tribulations of her teen years led her
stormily, but inevitably, to her future love of and
career in performance. Her mother Rosemary has described
her utter astonishment at watching her punk rocker
daughter take to Shakespeare, performing an extract from
Romeo and Juliet, assigned as class work, with utter
ease and fluency. There was no doubt in the minds of
anyone watching her acting that they were witnessing a
star in the making.
When the acting bug took a firm hold on Anderson, her
life miraculously turned around. Her grades improved,
along with her attitude, and she was promptly voted
“Most Improved Student”. After graduating from City High
School, she enrolled for acting classes at the renowned
DePaul University’s Goodman Theatre, where she scored a
Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts. Gillian was soon on her
way, for the very next summer, she was picked to attend
a workshop run by the National Theatre of Great Britain
at Cornell in Ithaca, New York. Very shortly afterwards,
she landed her first plum role in the off-Broadway
production “Absent Friends” in 1991, winning a Theater
World Award for her performance in this play. More stage
plays followed, along with a couple of student films and
a low-budget flick called ‘The Turning’, before Anderson
decided to get serious about movie acting, relocating to
L.A.
However roles did not suddenly miraculously appear,
leading to Anderson taking an audition for the TV pilot
of a new Fox Network show called ‘The X-Files’. She was
immediately taken with the script - and what young
actress wouldn’t dream of playing a role like Agent
Scully to David Duchovny's Agent Mulder ? - but both she
and Chris Carter, the show’s producer, had to do some
serious ducking and diving before the role was finally
hers. For starters, Anderson had to lie about her age:
she was still only 24, and the producers had reportedly
envisioned someone older, taller, bustier, blonder and
with – believe it or not – more general sex appeal for
the role. Anderson took a deep breath and claimed to be
27, but even this did not open the door. However Chris
Carter was backing her appointment, knowing in his gut
that she was perfect for the role, and stood firm with
the producers, insisting on his choice of actress.
Anderson was overjoyed to receive the news that she had
finally landed the part, and flew straight to Vancouver
where filming was due to start immediately. ‘The
X-Files' was an instant success with the viewing public,
thanks to its occult, offbeat themes and wacky
paranormal plotlines. Having initially thought that the
series would only run to a few episodes, it soon became
clear that the producers had a blockbuster of a winner
on their hands.
1997 was a good year for Anderson, as she won an Emmy
for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, a Golden
Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Drama TV
Series and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding
Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series.
In 1998, ‘The X-Files’ made the quantum leap to the big
screen with the release of ‘The X-Files: Fight the
Future’. In order to counter the notion that playing the
same character for five years straight meant that she
could not do anything else, Anderson decided to
diversify her choice of acting roles. In the movie
‘Chicago Cab’ (2008), she played a Southside Chicago gal
from the early 1920s, soon followed by ‘The Mighty’
(2008) in which she played a middle-aged alcoholic
biker. Choosing such extraordinarily diverse roles
showed all and sundry that Anderson possessed an acting
talent that ranged far beyond the demands of playing
Agent Scully. Not that Scully had been put to rest, for
2008 saw the release of the second X-Files film, 'I Want
To Believe', released some 6 years after the conclusion
of the parent TV series.
In 2000 Anderson achieved another triumph by becoming
the first woman ever to write and direct an episode of
‘The X-Files’. She then confounded the critics by
starring in a the period costume drama ‘The House of
Mirth’ (2000), written and directed by Terrence Davies.
Based on the novel by Edith Wharton, and set in the high
society of New York in the early 1900s, Gillian played
the role of Lily Bart, a young woman who falls from
favor with her family, meeting a sorry end. The film
attracted great acclaim and critical success, and
featured on Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 10 films of
2000. Gillian also won the British Independent Film
Award for Best Actress and Best Performance Award from
the Village Voice Film Critics’ Poll.
Meanwhile, ‘The X-Files’ completed its 9th and last
series in May 2002, marking a major transition point in
Anderson’s life and career. She had always loved living
in England, and soon decided to move back to London,
returning her focus to acting on the stage. From autumn
2002 until February 2003, she starred in Michael
Weller’s play ‘What The Night Is For’ in London’s West
End. Since then, she has taken on an interesting range
of roles in British film productions, including the
costume drama ‘Bleak House’ (2005), which earned her a
BAFTA nomination for Best Actress, followed by 'The Last
King of Scotland’ (2006) and ‘Straight Heads’ (2007).
More recently, she has taken on a new role as the
hostess of the TV show ‘Masterpiece’ (1971) for PBS.
Behind the camera, Anderson’s private life has been
spectacularly eventful and every bit as dramatic as her
career. She met first husband Clyde Klotz in 1994 on the
set of ‘The X Files’, where he was working as an
assistant art director, and they were soon engaged after
a whirlwind romance of only several weeks duration.
Curiously, the couple were married by a Buddhist priest
on the 17th hole of a golf course in Hawaii without the
presence of any onlookers, although Anderson reportedly
maintained that her parents were fine about not being
invited! Sadly, despite the birth of their daughter
Piper Maru in 1994, the marriage was short-lived, with
Anderson and Klotz divorcing in 1997.
Anderson subsequently coupled up with Julian Ozanne, a
documentary film-maker, and the two tied the knot in a
suitably romantic manner in the village of Shella on
Lamu, an island off the coast of Kenya. This marriage
lasted only 16 months. Since moving back to England,
however, Gillian seems to have enjoyed greater success
in love with new boyfriend, businessman Mark Griffiths.
Anderson gave birth to their first child, a son called
Oscar, in 2006, and the couple expect their second child
in 2008.
For many people, Gillian Anderson will always be most
fondly remembered for her groundbreaking role as FBI
Agent Dana Scully, and although she would be the first
to agree that fate delivered her a winning hand with
that role, she clearly has talent enough to extend far
beyond TV’s favorite skeptic, and so we want to believe
that the best is yet to come.
by Jane Bowles
Source:
The Biography Channel
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