Gillian Anderson

Gillian Anderson (born August 9, 1968, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) is an American actress and writer best known for her role as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully on the television series The X-Files (1993–2002, 2016, and 2018).

Early career

In high school Anderson thought about becoming a marine biologist, but community theatre participation whetted her appetite for acting. She earned a B.F.A. degree at the Goodman Theatre School at DePaul University, Chicago, and attended the National Theatre of Great Britain’s summer program at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, before pursuing a theatre career in New York City. Anderson appeared in the Off-Broadway production Absent Friends, winning a 1991 Theatre World Award, and in The Philanthropist at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, before moving to Los Angeles.

The X-Files

1 of 2

2 of 2

After a few motion-picture and television appearances, Anderson got her big break when she auditioned for a part on The X-Files. At the insistence of the show’s creator, Chris Carter, she landed her first starring role, playing Dana Scully, a skeptical scientist and doctor working as an FBI special agent alongside Fox (“Spooky”) Mulder (played by David Duchovny). Together the partners investigated paranormal events and government conspiracies. The story lines as well as the chemistry between Anderson and Duchovny made The X-Files one of the most popular shows on television in the 1990s, averaging 20 million viewers each week, and in 1997 Anderson won an Emmy Award for her performance. The following year the motion picture The X-Files: Fight the Future took in more than $30 million in its first weekend. Although the television series ended in 2002, a second movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, was released in 2008.

Britannica Quiz

Pop Culture Quiz

Films: The House of Mirth and The Last King of Scotland

In the 21st century Anderson worked frequently in the United Kingdom, where she had spent much of her childhood. She was widely praised for her starring role as Lily Bart in the film The House of Mirth (2000), a British adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel. Other films in which Anderson appeared included the Irish drama The Mighty Celt (2005); The Last King of Scotland (2006), which centres on Ugandan dictator Idi Amin; and Johnny English Reborn (2011), a spy spoof starring Rowan Atkinson.

In 2017 Anderson starred in the historical drama Viceroy’s House and in Crooked House, an adaptation of an Agatha Christie mystery. She then played an MI6 agent in the comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018). Her film credits from 2019 included The Sunlit Night. Anderson subsequently appeared in White Bird (2023) and Scoop (2024). In the latter film, which is based on true events, she played a news anchor who interviews Prince Andrew about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender.

Other TV work: The Fall, Sex Education, and The Crown

Anderson also took roles in several miniseries on British television. Among her portrayals were Lady Dedlock in Bleak House (2005), based on Charles Dickens’s novel; Wallis Simpson in Any Human Heart (2010); and, in another adaptation of a Dickens work, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (2011). From 2013 to 2016 she starred as a detective in the Northern Ireland-set crime drama The Fall, and during this time she also had a recurring role on the American series Hannibal (2013–15). In 2016 Anderson portrayed Anna Pavlovna Scherer in a television adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and reprised the role of Scully in a six-part X-Files miniseries. Ten additional episodes, starring Anderson and Duchovny, aired in 2018. She also appeared in American Gods in 2017, playing Media, a god who transforms into various celebrities, including Lucille Ball, David Bowie, and Marilyn Monroe.

Continuing to work steadily on TV, Anderson was later cast as a pubescent’s oversharing sex therapist mother in Sex Education (2019–23) and as Margaret Thatcher in the fourth season (2020) of The Crown; for her work in the latter series, the actress received her second Emmy. In the debut season (2022) of The First Lady, an anthology series about U.S. first ladies, she portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe

Books

Anderson ventured into writing in the 2010s, coauthoring (with Jeff Rovin) The EarthEnd Saga, a trilogy following the child psychologist Caitlin O’Hara as she investigates a series of paranormal activities. The series comprises A Vision of Fire (2015), A Dream of Ice (2016), and The Sound of Seas (2016). In 2017 she cowrote (with Jennifer Nadel) the self-help manual We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere. Thanks in part to her work on Sex Education, Anderson sought to make women comfortable with their desires, and in 2022 she asked for submissions about sexual fantasies. She later published a selection of them (as well as one by her) in Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous (2024).