#mark griffiths

Question: And as an only child to young parents, I'm guessing that you were like the third adult in the family in some ways.

Anderson: Absolutely. A few years ago my dad told me he'd had a strange dream about me. I was directing something, and I needed film - there was some kind of film shortage, and I asked my dad to get me some. He ended up finding some and getting it, and he was meeting me on the street to hand me this package, but it wasn't me as I am now, it was me as a 13- or 14-year-old child. And he realised that this dream was the first time he'd seen me as a child, that he'd never seen me in that way before, ever. It was so strange. But that was the way he dealt with life, and there wasn't much room for me to be a child.

Question: A lot of children who have that kind of background end up with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. They take everything on their own shoulders.

Anderson: In my case, there's a strange juxtaposition between being incredibly independent and being able to handle everything on my own - and I think that's a real part of me. It's what I project. But the same time there is sometimes this desperate need to have help and have guidance, but not being able to ask for it. And somehow I equate asking for it with neediness or failure or weakness in some way.

Question: Yet you know that we all have needs and weaknesses and bad days. You see it in your friends and your child, and you don't think they're weak or pathetic for that - so why can't you allow the same feeling in yourself?

Anderson: I think that a lot of it has to do with self-esteem and about feeling whether I deserve it or not. Somebody said to me the other day, 'It's OK to make a mistake.' And I literally burst into tears. I just thought, 'You know what? No, it's not OK.' I'm so completely fine with other people making mistakes, whether it's friends or my daughter or whoever. I love and admire artists who aren't afraid to make mistakes in public, and I find it deplorable that culturally we're so cruel and unforgiving of it. I'm incredibly open to that concept and forgiving for others, but I realise for me, it's not one iota OK.

April 16, 2008:

Shock: What’s that like with David now that you’re not with each other 16 hours a day on a series?

Anderson: It’s great, but it was great then, too. This is like a sibling relationship and I never had siblings. I had brothers and sisters that started when I was 13, so I was out of the house and didn’t have that experience.

February 25, 2017:

Gillian’s upbringing was more conventional, but perhaps moving around unsettled her: she was born in Chicago, but her parents soon moved to Puerto Rico, then London – where they stayed until she was 11 – before settling in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Aged 13, she ceased to be an only child when her brother Aaron was born (he had neurofibromatosis, a congenital condition that causes tumours to grow on the nervous system), followed by a sister, Zoe.

Gillian says there was ‘a lot of stuff to deal with’ in her childhood. She went off the rails, became a punk, dyed her hair, experimented with drugs and was voted ‘girl most likely to be arrested’ by her classmates – and actually was arrested and charged with trespass on the night of her graduation for trying to break into her school. ‘There was a point where it was highly recommended that I see a therapist because I was struggling in school. I guess that was the beginning of self-reflection and looking at behaviour patterns and historical stuff.’

Gillian’s father, who ran a film production company, tried to persuade her away from acting, or to at least learn word processing (her mother was a computer programmer), so she could earn money in the down times. ‘Good advice, but I didn’t listen,’ she says.

Instead Gillian moved to New York and worked as a waitress between theatre roles until she was cast in The X-Files, aged 24. She thought it would run for 13 episodes. Instead, it dominated the next ten years of her life. She met her first husband, Piper’s father Clyde Klotz, on set (he was assistant art director).

Having therapy as a teenager helped Gillian cope with fame, but she still felt overwhelmed at times. ‘There were occasions during that series when I wasn’t sure whether I could go on. I started having panic attacks on a daily basis while we were shooting, around the time Piper was born. It was a mixture of not having dealt with childhood problems, the work being intensive, living in the spotlight and the expectation on me, as well as not knowing how to get balance or properly take care of myself. The panic attacks forced me to start practising meditation, just to eke out a tiny bit of space for myself, and that made it possible to continue. Gillian and Clyde divorced after three years (she later said she had been too young and has encouraged her daughter to travel and ‘make the most of her life’ before getting seriously involved with a man), and she was briefly married to Julian Ozanne, a filmmaker. She then fell in love with Mark Griffiths, a businessman, with whom she has two sons, Oscar, ten, and Felix, eight.

Despite achieving fame on both sides of the Atlantic, she remained insecure: ‘For years I was very self-centred and focused on my body, my weight, and it caused so much sadness. That really moves me now, just how much of my younger life I missed out on because I was so focused on my thighs or my outfit; it was such a waste of time.’

Obsessing about appearance is part of the career she chose, Gillian concedes, ‘but it’s becoming the world we all operate in because of social media. Facebook and Instagram have made all women focus on how they look and how they’re represented.’ ...

Independence-wise being an only child is good, but there are traits that I have seen in other only children: being quite selfish, not really wanting to share. It’s taken a long time for me to push the boundaries of those and be less controlling, less protective of my world and my space.’ ...

Gillian saw a pattern with her partners: ‘I’d meet someone, instantly fall in love and spend every waking hour with them, but stopped doing the things I enjoyed doing, stopped taking care of myself. I adopted their interests, friends, music, tastes…before long I’d start to resent them, even though it was me who actively let myself go.’

May 12, 2025:

“I’m much more vain as a public persona, as the celebrity version of myself, than I am as an actor,” Anderson says, perfectly made-up today. “If it’s for a role, I don’t care. If it’s not for a role, I do care — or I care more anyway.”

On Desert Island Discs in 2003 Anderson claimed to possess good survival skills and she sticks by that. “I would know how to make a fire and how to build a shelter, but I think, more than anything, I know I’m a survivalist.” “Survivalist” conjures up an image of preppers stocking cans and guns, I say. “I grew up very, very quickly,” she explains. “I was an adult at quite a young age. I’d be able to trust that I’d figure out how to keep living.” ...

Anderson has talked in vague terms about her wayward teenage years living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There was an older boyfriend, a punk phase and getting into, as she once put it, “dangerous things”. She was in therapy at 14. Ten years later, while living off unemployment checks, she landed the part of Dana Scully in The X-Files and found overnight global fame. ...

Back in the X-Files mania days, Anderson loathed the celebrity circus: “I hated talking about myself, hated talking about the work, hated the whole pretence of it.” In the past decade she has made her peace with it: “I get the quid pro quo and I’m OK with it.” I’ve been given brief glimpses of Anderson, the make-up-free working mother juggling umpteen plates. But for now she is the stiletto-heeled movie star, and her car awaits. 

BONUS

The Truth Is Out There: Gillian Anderson, a Resilient Rising Star

GA Learned French because of Piper

The X-Files: a Family Affair

The X-Files: A Day-in-the-Life On-Set

Gillian Anderson's Thoughts on Fame and The X-Files (2008)

Gillian Anderson: a Retrospective Glance