It’s a frustrating business interviewing Gillian Anderson. She turns up bang on time and alone, no entourage. She’s intelligent, articulate and unexpectedly obliging: her agent had said a photo shoot was out of the question, but after our meeting Anderson gets in touch to say she’ll do one. In fact, I like her very much. All the same, she gives little away. In recent times she has made it clear to interviewers that she has no interest in talking about the phenomenally successful TV series that made her a household name, The X-Files. Fair enough: it’s 10 years sinc ... [Continua a leggere]

Photography by Roger Erickson Gillian Anderson remembers being struck by a magazine article in which a woman in her late forties escapes the constraints of marriage and motherhood for a solo vacation -- “to somewhere like Italy.” There, she finds herself at a dinner party among guests she does not know. “She decided that she wasn’t going to mention she had kids,” says Anderson in an accent that skitters pleasantly between British and American. “It was fascinating to read. It changes the energy of the conversation if people are talking about their kid ... [Continua a leggere]

You're starring in the slapstick comedy Johnny English Reborn, which seems an unusual choice for you. Was that part of the appeal?I generally like to make choices based on who I'd like to work with - and I liked the idea of playing the MI7 [spy agency] role with Rowan Atkinson. I think the thing that surprised me the most was how technical it was . . . I was aware of how I needed to work my technical muscle in a way that I hadn't before. Is the atmosphere on the set of a comedy film different from that on, say, a period drama?There's a heightened sense of comedy around and there ... [Continua a leggere]

Having tea with Gillian Anderson is a thoroughly pleasant business — a splash of muted glamour in a fairly drab London autumn. I thoroughly recommend it, as a more engaging companion it would be a challenge to find. We meet in the studiously bijou surroundings of the Zetter Townhouse in St John’s Square, chosen, I suspect, because no one there has the slightest clue who she is. She is wearing the no-make-up disguise, and glides serenely under London’s radar, something she clearly enjoys. She is a tad jetlagged, she says, having just arrived home from a three-week s ... [Continua a leggere]

La prima volta che ho visto Gillian Anderson interpretare un ruolo che non fosse Scully è stato quando ho comprato la videocassetta di “Scherzi del cuore” (ovviamente, comprata apposta per vedere lei). Il film era una piacevole commedia corale dove Gillian si trovava a lavorare accanto sia ad attori emergenti che ad attori consumati del calibro di Sean Connery. Gillian girò quel film nel pieno del successo di X-Files e, seppur sforzandomi, proprio non riuscivo ancora a separarla da Scully. La guardavo sullo schermo della tv e non potevo fare a meno di pensare &ld ... [Continua a leggere]

The first surprise is Gillian Anderson’s accent. I have heard about how she can slip from English to American as effortlessly as silk runs through fingers. Indeed, by way of research, I have watched her being interviewed by Jay Leno (for whom she adopted an American accent) and Michael Parkinson (an English one). I even know how and why she does this – she lived here until she was 11, moved there until she was 35, then, five years ago, came back to live here. Still, nothing quite prepares you for sitting opposite FBI Special Agent Scully and hearing the head gi ... [Continua a leggere]

Gillian Anderson is something of an enigma, which is perhaps fitting given that she spent nine uninterrupted years playing the paranormal investigator Dana Scully in the TV phenomenon that was The X Files. On the one hand, there is her onscreen guise, defined, whether the actress likes it or not, by Scully’s glacial poise and biting scepticism, while on the other there is her fiery public persona, characterised by a turbulent personal life, which includes two marriages and two divorces, the last in early 2006, when she split from the documentary maker Julian Ozanne after just 16 ... [Continua a leggere]

Gillian Anderson will star in and produce a biopic of Martha Gellhorn, a trailblazing female war correspondent who covered conflicts from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam and weathered strife in personal relationships that included a failed marriage to Ernest Hemingway. Anderson's company, Fiddlehead Prods., has acquired "Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life," a 2004 biography by Caroline Moorehead. British playwright and screenwriter Sharman Macdonald is penning the feature adaptation.Anderson, who opens July 25 in 20th Century Fox film "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," will play Gellhorn.Debor ... [Continua a leggere]

Gillian Anderson will take on one of the most controversial roles an actress can play on the stage. She will star as Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House, which opens at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre in Covent Garden next spring. A new version of the drama has been written by Zinnie Harris and will be directed by Kfir Yefet. More than a century after Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, where Nora famously, walks out on her husband and children, that defiant act still has the capacity to shock. 'How does a woman... how can a woman... abandon her children like that?' Gillian wondered, when we di ... [Continua a leggere]