11 Things You Might Not Have Known About Gillian Anderson, From Her Punk Background to Her Lasting Impact on Women in Science
The 'X-Files' and 'Sex Education' star has taken on a bold new role in the Western 'The Abandons'
Gillian Anderson became a ’90s icon thanks to her signature role as skeptical FBI agent Dana Scully in the hit sci-fi show The X-Files. In recent years, the now 57-year-old actress has been busier than ever, and she’s currently starring in Netflix’s new Western series The Abandons.
Anderson has long been known for the quiet power she brings to the screen, and in real life, she’s just as fascinating as the strong women she plays. Read on for a look at some fun facts you may not have known about the charismatic star.
1. Gillian Anderson has two distinct accents
Gillian Anderson was born in Chicago, but spent her childhood in London, and has continued to spend much of her time there throughout her life. Because of this, she is bidialectal, which means she is capable of switching seamlessly between American and British accents.
The actress has explained that her accent naturally changes depending on where she is and who she is with, saying, “Part of me wishes I could control it, but I can’t. I just slip into one or the other. When I moved to the States I tried hard to cling on to my British accent because it made me different,” and she’s used both accents in her various roles.
2. She was a teenage punk
As a teen, Anderson’s family moved back to the U.S. During this time, she went through a punk phase, leading her classmates to vote her “class clown,” “most bizarre girl” and “most likely to be arrested.” She later recalled, “When we moved to Michigan . . . my folks still had a flat in London that we would go to in the summertime. And through one of those trips I had started to become interested in the punk scene and started to dress differently than a lot of the kids in Grand Rapids, Michigan, were dressing. And I got my nose pierced and I started to shave my head and dye my hair and wear a lot of black. And so I looked like somebody that might be arrested . . . I was a bit of a class clown, usually the one that people would get to do the things that they were afraid to get in trouble for. So the mixture of those two things contributed, no doubt, to that vote.”
Anderson actually ended up being arrested the night before her high school graduation, as she tried to glue the locks of her school’s doors shut so people couldn’t enter in the morning. All things considered, she still turned out pretty well!
3. She isn’t a natural redhead
During her time on The X-Files, Anderson’s red hair was instantly recognizable, but it wasn’t her natural color. She explained, “In the beginning, Dana Scully’s hair was my natural color, which is as dull as anything. It was 1993 and I was 24. After we shot the pilot and The X-Files was picked up for series, our executive producer Chris Carter said: ‘She’s going red.’ And that’s how Scully became a redhead. For the next nine years I dyed it on a semi-regular basis, but when the show ended in 2002 I defiantly became a blonde and have been one ever since.”
4. Gillian Anderson had to stand on a box while filming opposite David Duchovny
Gillian Anderson and her costar, David Duchovny, had major chemistry on The X-Files—so much so that you’d never know she was often standing on a box while they were filmed together! Anderson stood 5-foot-3 while Duchovny stood 6 feet, so she would perch on a box (referred to as a “Scully box” and a “Gilly board”) to appear closer in height to him.
5. Her signature character encouraged countless women to pursue jobs in STEM
Dana Scully was such an influential character that she created “the Scully Effect,” a phenomenon in which more women than ever before pursued careers in scientific and law enforcement fields due to seeing her excel as an FBI agent and medical doctor on TV.
Anderson said that over the years, many women have told her how Scully impacted their career choices, and reflecting on “the Scully Effect,” she said, “At the time that Scully showed up, we didn’t see that type of female represented very much at all out in the world of television . . . So to suddenly have an appealing, intelligent, strong-minded female who was appreciated by her pretty cool male coworker was an awesome thing to behold, and I think that a lot of young women said, ‘That’s me. I’m interested in that. I want to do that. I want to be that.’”
6. Gillian Anderson wasn’t the first choice to play Dana Scully
It’s impossible to imagine anyone but Anderson playing Scully, but the creator of The X-Files, Chris Carter, said that the network originally didn’t think she was attractive enough for the role, explaining, “I wanted to take her before the studio and the network . . . Even though Gillian’s beautiful, she wasn’t their idea of sexy. First, because they didn’t understand what I was trying to do with the show. And she was an unknown, so that never helps.”
7. She’s played real women and literary icons
Anderson’s diverse résumé includes a number of film and TV adaptations of classic literature, like The House of Mirth (2000), Tristram Shandy (2005), Bleak House (2005), Great Expectations (2011), Moby Dick (2011) and War & Peace (2016). She’s also played real-life women who made history, including Margaret Thatcher in The Crown (2020) and Eleanor Roosevelt in The First Lady (2022).
8. Her sons have the same names as the characters in ‘The Odd Couple’
Anderson has two sons, Oscar and Felix, with her former partner, Mark Griffiths. Those names just so happen to be the same names as the characters from The Odd Couple, but she claimed that she wasn’t inspired by the classic ’70s sitcom.
9. Gillian Anderson wrote a sexy book
Anderson won over a new generation of fans with her role as Jean Milburn, a sex therapist and mom of a teen boy, in the Netflix comedy series Sex Education. Anderson’s research for the role inspired her to publish Want, a book compiling an array of sexual fantasies anonymously submitted by women around the world, in 2024.
In the book’s introduction, she wrote, “I have always been intrigued by sexual fantasies and I view my role in this book as that of a curator, shepherding these diverse and amazing voices into book form. It has been an incredible journey and so gratifying to see how different we all are but also how much we are the same the world over.”
10. She has a line of soft drinks
In 2023, Anderson launched a line of soft drinks winkingly called G Spot. These sparkling “functional drinks” made with natural ingredients are available in flavors called Lift, Protect, Soothe and Arouse.
11. ‘The Abandons’ marks her first time playing a villain
In Anderson’s latest show, The Abandons, she plays Constance Van Ness, the cutthroat widowed matriarch of a wealthy mining family. It’s an unusual role for the star, and that’s exactly why she was drawn to it. As she said, “I haven’t really played a baddie before, and I was interested in exploring that.”
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