Gillian Leigh Anderson (born August 9, 1968) is an American actress, best known for her role as FBI Agent Dana Scully in the American TV series The X-Files.
She was born in Chicago but soon after her birth her family moved to Puerto Rico for fifteen months and then to Crouch End in London. When she was eleven, her family moved again, this time to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she attended City Middle/High School, a program for gifted students with a strong emphasis on the humanities. With her English accent and background, she felt out of place in the American Midwest, and developed a reputation as a strong-willed and rebellious teenager. She had her nose pierced in the early 1980s, dyed her hair various colors, and was once arrested for gluing the locks of the school closed.
She found an outlet for her talents when she began acting in high school and community theater productions. She attended Goodman Theater School of Drama at DePaul University in Chicago, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1990.
Following some professional stage work, she "broke into" television. In 1993, she had a guest appearance on the collegiate drama Class of '96 on the fledgling Fox Network, and auditioned for the role of Dana Scully on The X-Files. There she met assistant art director Clyde Klotz, whom she married and with whom she had a daughter, Piper Maru, in 1994. (An alien-abduction storyline explained her brief absence from the series for delivery.) Anderson and Klotz later divorced. She had roles in a handful of films during the run of The X-Files and starred in The House of Mirth, an adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel of the same name. Since The X-Files ended, she has performed in several stage productions and worked on various film projects. She has also done narrative work for documentaries on scientific topics, in which the voice listeners recognize as "Agent Scully" lends an air of credible authority to the material. As of February 2005, she is currently working on a BBC television adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House and she recently completed work on a film version of the novel Tristram Shandy. Both are due to appear later in the year. In December 2004, Anderson married longtime partner Julian Ozanne, a documentary filmmaker, on Lamu's island of Shella, off the coast of Africa.
Gillian Anderson: Trivia
There exist over 180 fake nude and pornographic images of her; only one of which (a nipple-slip at an awards ceremony) has been proven genuine. She has been quoted as saying she doesn't mind: "It's just people getting their rocks off."
Performed nude alongside co-star David Duchovny in the X-Files episode "One Son".
The X-Files episode "Piper Maru" is named after her child, Piper.
X-Files director, creator, writer and actor Chris Carter is godfather to her child.
Her favourite X-Files episode is "Triangle".
She wrote and directed the X-Files episode "all things."
Her eyes are blue-green, and her original hair color is ash-blonde.
Favourite movie is said to be "Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers"
Tattoos include a Tahitian tribal symbol on the inside of her right ankle, the words "every day" in Sanskrit on her right wrist, and a "P" on her left hip (presumably for daughter Piper)
As stated in an X-Files commentary, she is allergic to cats.
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