Gillian of the Spirits
Q: What do you read when you do have the time?
A: Most of the things I read have something to do with moving forward, either in my work on myself or in my work in my life.
Q: Are you a big self-help book reader?
A: I've read the good ones.
Q: I saw a book called Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing sitting on your table. Is that a good one?
A: Yes.
Q: Seeing that book made me want to ask you about some of your beliefs. Do you believe in God?
A: I believe that there is an energy, a vibration that is God, that is in everything, that is everything.
Q: Nothing personal about it, though?
A: No.
Q: What religious orientation were you raised in?
A: None. My mom was raised Catholic. I'm not sure about my father, but after he moved away from home, his family converted to Mormonism. I gravitated to my own orientation at a very young age. I don't know where it came from.
Q: Do you pray?
A: Yes.
Q: But not with the idea of being listened to?
A: More felt than listened to. It's more the energy of praying.
Q: Do you believe in an afterlife?
A: Yes. Many afterlives. I believe in reincarnation. I believe we're here to learn and grow.
Q: Are you a young soul or an old soul?
A: Old.
Q: Do people say that about you?
A: Yes.
Q: Have you lived lives as a man and a woman?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you believe there are fundamental differences between men and women?
A: You can't help taking the influence of society into consideration when you think about that question. My daughter is mostly around girls and she wants to dress like a boy, play like a boy, she wants boys' swim trunks. She asks me, "Why wasn't I born a boy? Why can't I be a boy?" She probably connects with the energy and freedom of boys. But another aspect of the difference between men and women came up in conversation recently. I was talking with somebody who said that a man can, in a marriage, have casual sexual relations with another woman and have it not affect his devotion to his wife, whereas a woman cannot separate sexual experience from devotion. Until I got involved in the argument, I didn't believe that, and then I thought it might be true. But I still don't think it's right. Another difference between men and women is that men have trouble being in a relationship with a woman who makes more money. But I think that's more societal and ego-based.
Q: You've been to psychics many times, haven't you?
A: I go to psychics when I need some guidance, not to find out the future. I always leave with a feeling of hope.
Q: If you were in great emotional turmoil, would you be more likely to go to a psychic or a psychotherapist?
A: A psychotherapist. I've been in psychotherapy steadily since I was 14.
Q: So you're involved with it more as a way of life than as a cure for something?
A: Yes.
Q: What kind of therapy do you think is the most successful?
A: It's a mixture of the approach and the person. All the therapists I've seen in my life have been appropriate for the period in which I saw them.
Q: When you suddenly had to deal with mammoth changes like becoming famous, did you change therapists?
A: In the beginning there was a therapist in Los Angeles that I had phone conversations with from Vancouver. The woman I finally found in Vancouver I wish I'd found back then. But she came into my life when I needed her most. I have a new one here, a man who's amazing, who does a lot of energy work.
Q: What is "energy work"?
A: It involves specific kinds of breathing work that help in conjunction with the therapy to move energy in your body that's blocked, sometimes for years, when we're holding on to patterns, traumas, behaviors--which is what a lot of Anatomy of the Spirit is about. You only go see this guy when you've got some really heavy-duty stuff to work out.
Q: How do you give performances at the same time you go through stuff like this?
A: If I didn't do this I'd be a useless actor.
Q: Don't you get into some difficult emotional states and then have to go to work and do a scene that has nothing to do with it?
A: All the time. My life has been about that.
Q: Do you get depressed?
A: I've had bouts of depression. I know about not being able to get out of bed. I've been aware of how my behaviors and perceptions have contributed to my depression and I've done something about that.
Q: Is it just discipline that gets you through, or do you make use of what's going on?
A: A lot of times I make use of what's going on. But there have been times where it has been too overwhelming. There were many periods of time up in Vancouver when I just couldn't stop crying. I'd show up in the makeup chair and they'd start to touch me up and on the way to the set I'd start crying.
Q: Do you think you were born a more happy or less happy person?
A: I'm the oldest of three. My brother's 13 years younger and my sister's 16 years younger. My brother and I were born from the same seed and with us there's an inner unrest. My sister--we don't know where she came from, because from the beginning she'd walk down the stairs with a smile on her face and say hi to everybody and was perfectly happy. It was like, what family was she born in?
Q: Must be the luck of the draw.
A: I also believe it's planetary, and that, as I said before, we choose how we come into this life based on what it is we have to learn. Some people have harder lessons than others.
Q: How much of your life have you spent learning lessons alone, unattached to anyone?
A: A couple periods of four months. One of the lessons I've had to learn was about being alone. It's one of the things I'm most afraid of.
Q: Because you haven't done it a lot?
A: No, I haven't done it a lot because I've been afraid of it.
Q: Are you unattached now, in one of those phases?
A: Not completely. [Laughs] I made very good use of the four months that I was alone, and they were incredibly difficult. But I learned a good portion of what I needed to learn and now I have an opportunity to put that to work, so to speak.
Q: Do you easily become emotionally dependent?
A: I'm a mixture of incredibly independent and dependent upon the high--the romantic high. But I'm willing to work on every aspect of a relationship. Most of the confrontation part I welcome. I'm a stickler for the truth. I want the opportunity to deal with it.
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