Gillian Anderson

Overview

Born
August 9, 1968 · Chicago, Illinois, USA
Birth name
Gillian Leigh Anderson
Height
5′ 3″ (1.60 m)

Biography

Family

Spouses
Children
Parents
Relatives

Trivia

She was voted "Class Clown", "Most Bizarre Girl" and "Most Likely to be Arrested" by her classmates in high school. In fact, she was arrested on graduation night for trying to glue the locks shut at her high school.
Told The X-Files (1993) executives that she was age 27 so that she would appear more credible as an FBI agent with a medical degree.
She and her parents left the USA and moved to London, UK, and later Northern Ireland, from age 2 to age 11. After that, they moved from the UK to Michigan, USA. She also lived in Puerto Rico for a while. In 2002, she relocated to London, where works and lives to this day.
Standing at just 5' 3", she has to stand on an apple box to shoot many scenes in The X-Files (1993).
She is bidialectal. While she was living in London as a child, she had taken on a British accent to make friends. After moving back to the USA, she adopted an American accent because she was teased by her classmates for speaking with a British accent.

Quotes

[on her role as Special Agent Dana Scully on The X-Files (1993)] I am more spontaneous than my character . . .
[interview in "Movieline" magazine, Dec. 1998] Fame is complicated and definitely overrated. There are perks to it that are unfathomable. But the other aspect is there's little to no privacy at all - being anywhere at any time and knowing that somebody you cannot see is probably taking a picture of you, which has happened hundreds of times. I look around and cannot see anyone and a couple of weeks later I see a photo of me looking around.
When I think of normal, I think of mediocrity . . . and mediocrity scares the fuck out of me!
It's easier to be myself here. I can go out wearing whatever the hell I want, no matter how ridiculous it looks. If I do that in America, people look at me like I'm insane. There are aspects of the British press which are incredibly intrusive, but then you will go to a premiere and someone will ask permission to take a photo, and when you say, "That's enough", they will back off. In the States, you go to a restaurant and there are people lined up outside with 8x10s of you. Or they just follow you with a video camera. I had someone deliberately rear-end my car a few years ago in L.A., and there was a video camera: they were videoing my reaction. Luckily, I was in a good mood.
I know people who are embarrassed to be American. They don't like showing their passports. It's becoming a scary place. It takes someone very brave not to be quiet, someone who doesn't mind death threats, their life being turned upside down, news cameras outside their door. There is no freedom of speech in America anymore. They are not living up to the constitution. There's so much fear in America and control.