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Gillian Anderson was one of the world's most recognisable TV stars during the X-Files' '90s heyday. The twice-divorced actress spent ten years playing no-nonsense FBI agent Dana Scully in what she refers to as "The Series" before filming wrapped in 2002. Just when she was finally starting to shake off her sceptical alter ego with starring turns on the London stage and BBC's Bleak House, she's slipped back into the old lab coat to reunite with sidekick David Duchovny in The X-Files: I Want To Believe. As the long-awaited movie hits cinemas this week, we dish up ten fascinating facts about sci-fi's most famous redhead.
1. Gillian was born in Chicago, the eldest of three children to a computer analyst mum and production company owner dad. She was raised in London before the family headed back across the pond to Michigan when she was 11.
2. Gillian harboured ambitions to be a marine biologist before landing a role in a community play at the age of 17. She recalls: "I loved digging up worms and cutting them up into little pieces. In the interests of science, of course!" Hmm, do we believe her?
3. Gillian became a rebel in her teens after being teased mercilessly for her English accent. She dyed her hair an array of bright colours and had her nose pierced, although she admits that she wasn't too keen on the needle. "I fainted when it was inserted. My father was furious about it," she says.
4. Gillian was voted 'class clown' and 'most bizarre girl' in high school, as well as 'most likely to be arrested'. True to form, she was nicked on graduation night for trying to glue the locks shut at school. Tsk tsk!
5. Gillian's first job was selling adverts for the Yellow Pages as a teenager.
6. It took hairdressers 17 hours to change Gillian's hair from her natural blonde to Scully's red for the new X-Files movie. "17 hours on my butt!" she moans.
7. Gillian is just 5' 3" and had to stand on an apple box for many of her scenes in The X-Files. However, she's no slouch in the feet department, boasting a respectable size seven.
8. Gillian admits to having experienced a lifelong feeling of anxiety. She says: "I've [always] this feeling of something being wrong. It's hard to describe, but it's like having a sense of dread from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed. There's this constant feeling that an accident is about to happen, or that I've done something bad that someone is going to find out."
9. Gillian has been in therapy since she was 14. She says: "It's no big deal; it's just there in my life and I find it helpful. I like self-examination."
10. A mechanical moggy had to be created for one X-Files episode because Gillian is allergic to cats.
