Gillian Anderson

Biography of Gillian Anderson

Gillian Leigh Anderson, was born on August 9, 1968 in Chicago, Illinois. She is an American actress and author.

Before her acting career, Gillian Anderson worked as a waitress and had a role in the play Absent Friends, for which she received the Theater World Award for Best Young Actress. After this success, her next project was the film The Turning, which, however, flopped.

After a guest appearance on the US television series Class of '96 in 1992, she finally landed her first major television role, starring as Special Agent Dana Scully in Chris Carter's series The X Files. Anderson played Dana Scully for nine years in almost all of the 202 series episodes as well as in the movies The X-Files - The Movie (1998) and The X-Files - I want to Believe (2008). She has received numerous awards for her performance, including a Golden Globe and an Emmy.

In addition to this television engagement, she starred in other films, including The Mighty (1998), Chicago Cab (1998), The House of Mirth (2000).

After the X-Files ended for the time being, Anderson moved to London. There she shot the films The Mighty Celt (2005) and A Cock and Bull Story (2005), among others. She also returned to theater, starring in Rebecca Gilman's What the Night is for and The Sweetest Swing in Baseball in London's West End.

Anderson received critical acclaim for her portrayal of Lady Dedlock in the 2005 BBC multi-part film adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House. She received both an Emmy and Golden Globe nomination. This was followed by a role in The Last King of Scotland (2006) opposite Oscar-winning Forest Whitaker and a starring role in the revenge thriller Straightheads (2007). In 2008, she appeared in the comedy New York for Beginners alongside Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst and Jeff Bridges.

In the early summer of 2009, Anderson again acted in London theaters. She took on the role of Nora in a remake of Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House at the Donmar Warehouse.

In June 2009 her new film, the satire Boogie Woogie, premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. In it she stars alongside Christopher Lee, Heather Graham and Charlotte Rampling. She then had a role in the Channel 4 film adaptation of William Boyd's acclaimed novel Any Human Heart, which aired in four parts in the winter of 2010. In spring 2011 she appeared in the multi-part BBC produced television mini-series The Crimson Petal and the White. From 2013 to 2016 she starred alongside Jamie Dornan as Stella Gibson in the BBC Two crime series The Fall.

Since 2019 she has been in the British series Sex Education in the role of sex therapist Dr. to see Jean Milburn. In 2020, she portrayed former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the fourth season of The Crown. For this she received another Golden Globe and Emmy in 2021.

While filming The X Files: The FBI Strange Cases, Anderson met art director Errol Clyde Klotz, whom she married in 1994. In the same year their daughter was born. In 1997, Anderson and Klotz split.

Anderson was married in 2004 to Julian Ozanne, a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker. The couple separated in April 2006. She has two sons with English businessman Mark Griffith.

From 2016 she was in a relationship with the British screenwriter Peter Morgan, at the end of 2020 the couple announced their separation.