Gillian Anderson, star of The X-Files on big screen and small, talks about acting with bees, swimming with sharks, kissing with David Duchovny, consulting with psychics, contending with past lives and taking chances with her new film, _ Dancing About Architecture._
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Every inch of the serene, rustic wood interior of the house Gillian Anderson is renovating urges your eye toward what is, at the moment, only warm darkness punctuated by the low thunder of waves hitting the sand a few feet away. The cavernous, dimly lit living room opens out onto a deck that looks over a world of silver water and is cooled on this hot Los Angeles night by the only fresh air in the whole city.
The X-Files bought this gem, and The X-Files makes it a necessity. Anderson knows better than to complain about the brutal schedule she's working for a sixth season of The X-Files, but the series that made her famous has to wear on her no matter how much it pays, no matter how much validation it generates and no matter how much more fun it is than any other job in modern America. And not only is there the grinding demand of The X-Files to deal with, there's the challenge of escaping from The X-Files into the movie career she really wants. You need some peace and quiet to mastermind a trick like that.
So far, Anderson has turned down all leads in all alien-infected spectacles she's been offered--except, of course, last summer's The X-Files movie and its upcoming sequel (due out in the summer of 2000). She's taken instead a succession of small, non-Scully character parts in independent projects. She played an eccentric alcoholic biker chick in The Mighty and a nail-biting, working-class girl who fights with her boyfriend in Chicago Cab. And in her new film, Dancing About Architecture, which surrounds her with a remarkable ensemble that includes Sean Connery and Gena Rowlands, she plays a romantically embittered theater director who gets her faith restored by Jon Stewart.
The unusual thing about Anderson's big-screen career is not that she's avoided parts that play off Scully, but how good she's been in her aggressively eccentric departures. Odd as it seems for someone who's managed to portray the same character week after week for over five years, Anderson appears to be a chameleon-type actress. The extreme purposefulness with which she approaches her work may be the only characteristic she shares with Dana Scully. Anderson herself is an emotional self-explorer for whom the truth "out there" has never been as compelling as the truth in there. It would probably take quite an array of different screen characters just to let out the energies that have been tamped down by seasons of playing the straight-arrow Scully. Any conversation had with Anderson over the sound of waves in the dark of night would convince you of that.
VIRGINIA CAMPBELL: I remember that you rented a house on the beach when you were making The X-Files movie--is that what made you want to buy this place when you moved back to L.A.?
GILLIAN ANDERSON: Yeah, actually. I almost bought a place in town, but after living next to the water I realized the balance it gives you. I felt like I needed to have the water around me. It's very soothing.
Q: Are you going to redecorate this place by yourself or hire someone to do it for you?
A: I'm doing this without a decorator. I know exactly what I like. It's going to be very natural, very clean, a mixture of ancient and modern--white walls, black-painted wood floors, contemporary paintings. I've been fortunate enough to start a collection of art.
Q: Are the artists you collect famous?
A: One of them's relatively famous, Alexis Rockman. One has become one of my closest friends--Darren Waterston. Another is Tony Sherman, who I'm working on some projects with.
Q: What kind of project would you be doing with a painter?
A: He's painting me. For one project, he wanted to know which fictional or historical characters I'd like to portray.
Q: Good question. What did you tell him?
A: Two images in particular have really affected me. One is the pre-Raphaelite painting by Sir John Everett Millais of Ophelia floating down the stream amid flowers. The other is the scene at the end of The Piano when Holly Hunter put her foot deliberately in the coil of rope and she's been dragged into the ocean and everything goes quiet and she has that vacuum of choice. There's a peacefulness and a holding of time in that moment.
Q: You obviously like the water. Do you go diving?
A: The first time I ever scuba dived was in Australia when I was doing press for Twentieth Century Fox. I'd asked if there was anywhere I could go snorkeling and the studio misunderstood and set up a thing at Manly aquarium where I was scuba diving in a tank with gray sharks. It was exhilarating.
Q: I would assume that because you're valuable to the studio, these sharks were well fed.
A: Yes, though there was one that was a bit moody and feisty because she was pregnant. She didn't want anything around her and she turned very quickly.
Q: It's an odd idea of how to please a star.
A: But it's exactly how to please me.
Q: Well, they should know--they're the same studio that put a live bee on you to interrupt your kiss with David Duchovny in The X-Files movie, right?
A: No, in that scene there was only a dead bee that I pull out from my collar. You saw the bee go under my lapel in the previous scene. For that, they had a queen bee in a container and they put it under my lapel before they started shooting. Then they put the other bee on my shoulder and hoped it would find its way under my lapel to find the queen. They always go to the queen.
Q: Well, live bee or dead bee, Scully and Mulder's near-kiss scene was probably most people's favorite scene in the movie.
A: We actually do kiss on an episode of the new season of the show.
Q: That's certainly good news. What are the circumstances?
A: It happens on an episode where Scully and Mulder are investigating the Bermuda Triangle and find themselves on an old ship in 1939.
Q: The X-Files movie was the first time people got to see you on the big screen. A lot of actors who work well on the small screen just don't translate, but obviously you do. Were you relieved to see that for yourself?
A: You know, I guess I never had a doubt, because in my own naive way I expected that my desire to do it would overpower any reality.
Q: Isn't it a relief to have Hollywood know you can handle the big screen?
A: Well, because it really was basically an action film, most people I've talked to have just said, [races through the words] "The movie's great, you're great in it."
Q: In your new film, Dancing About Architecture, you have quite an eclectic ensemble of actors around you--Gena Rowlands, Sean Connery, Madeleine Stowe, Dennis Quaid, Angelina Jolie, Ellen Burstyn, Jon Stewart. Who struck you as the most memorable?
A: Ellen Burstyn. I felt really out of my league next to her.
Q: I'd assume Sean Connery must be doing something interesting in the movie, since otherwise, why would he be in it for next to no pay?
A: I've only seen a few dailies, but I saw in Sean's work stuff I'd never seen him do before. Certain expressions, a certain depth. It's still Sean, but my impression is that we're going to think of him in a whole new way.
Q: Even people who understand that the charisma stars project may have nothing to do with who they really are still insist that Sean Connery is the exception--that he's as cool in real life as he is on-screen.
A: Absolutely. There's an energy that Sean projects onscreen that is so radiant and sexual and intriguing and powerful. And if he were to walk in here right now and be hidden behind that partition, you'd still feel his energy. Men, women and children flock to him. My daughter went right for him.
Q: In Dancing About Architecture you're part of a large ensemble, and in both Chicago Cab and The Mighty you had very small parts. Aren't you looking for a leading-lady part to do before the safety net of The X-Files ends?
A: Oh yeah. I've found a couple. One I may do next summer--it's been offered to me, there's a director attached and I'm involved in making it happen the way that I would want it to happen if I were to do it. I can't really say any more about it at this point.
Q: What movies have you seen lately that made you think you'd like to have been offered that part?
A: I would have taken Oscar and Luanda. I'd have taken One True Thing. I'd have taken, based on the script, Sliding Doors. Ethan Frome. Emma. Sense and Sensibility.
Q: Is it true you were interested in Killing Mrs. Tingle?
A: No, Harvey Weinstein offered it to me, but I said no. He kept offering me scary things, and I kept saying, "No, no, no." He said, "At least read it, it's more like what you'd do than the other scary things we sent you." He also wanted me to think about The Faculty.
Q: Are the new teen horror flicks the kind of thing Hollywood wants you to do?
A: Other things, too--there are a lot of things I'm not interested in doing. But that's a large percentage of it.
Q: Let's talk a bit about acting. What performance have you seen on-screen recently that wowed you?
A: Cate Blanchett in Oscar and Lucinda. She's intriguing, and she has weight to her, and she's wonderfully subtle. She's a damn good actress.
Q: Do you think actors are born rather than made?
A: I do. My whole belief system is that our paths are drawn for us.
Q: Do you study people around you?
A: I'm an observer, but I don't ever take things in and think, "Oh, that would be interesting to use for a character."
Q: You think you can find it all in yourself?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you ever worry about cannibalizing yourself?
A: Well, there's one thing I wouldn't play because I'd be afraid of it seeping into my life, and that's insanity. But I do think everything can be found inside you if you're honest in your work. But I also believe that in simply observing a particular kind of walk, say, we've imprinted it in our brains so that later in a role it might naturally, organically happen without our saying, "I saw that once."
Q: How would your ideal director treat you?
A: My ideal director would be working with me on a script I felt passionate about and would go into a process that involved an intense, intimate dialogue with me about the character, the mood, the vision.
Q: You don't need to be coddled or fathered or mothered?
A: No.
Q: Is that stage training?
A: No, it's life training. I've sought after coddling before in my life, and I don't think it'll happen any more. So I don't think I'll have any need for it in my work.
Q: You sound pretty secure, then.
A: I was terrified during Dancing About Architecture. But I'm in love with the process. I'll dive in and try to figure things out no matter how afraid I am, or how much I feel I'm not getting it. And my brain doesn't wrap very easily around things I'm afraid of. A blank wall goes up. It's like in therapy when you're about to get to something, and your mind goes blank. It's hard work to get to the depth of it. But it's the anticipation of the work that's difficult--the fear of failing or of pain. The actual doing of it brings in light.
Q: Do you read your reviews?
A: Most of my experience with reviews was when I was doing theater, and I read all of them.
Q: How do you deal with criticism?
A: Ultimately, no one's a harder critic of my work than I am, so if I read something bad then I'm not surprised, and if I read something good, then I know it's not true. [Laughs] To be honest, if it's good I don't let myself get attached to it. The reviews of the show have been very positive, but that's more about my character and the writers. Way at the beginning someone wrote something that I only read later, about Scully being two-dimensional, which hurt because it was true then. How I'll feel about criticism of my performance in Dancing About Architecture, I don't really know.
Q: What's the first movie that ever had a big effect on you?
A: Star Wars, in London when I was probably around eight.
Q: What's the first movie you ever got obsessed with and saw over and over?
A: The first and only film I ever watched over and over was Out of Africa. I have an image of the house on the plantation that encapsulates my whole feeling for the movie, which has as much to do with Africa as it does with the idea of working in film. It seems like from the moment I saw Out of Africa I realized there were things I'd like to learn about. There had been a huge period when I'd had no interest in learning, and nothing anybody attempted to teach me would stay in my brain. It had to do with my being told I had to go to school, and also with some kind of survival mechanism--it was all I could do to focus just on what was going on in my brain at the time. But when the awareness [that I'd like to learn about things] came into my life, I no longer had time to do it. If there's one regret in my life--and I don't have regrets--it would be that I didn't pay attention in school. Now I have stacks of books and CD-ROMs just waiting for when I have the time.
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.
Q: Does your idea of happiness include family?
A: Yes. But let me back up. My deepest idea of happiness has nothing to do with another person. It's got everything to do with peace in my own mind. But I would like to have a family again, a partner and another child or two. It's contingent upon a certain environment of healthiness.
Q: Have you forgiven your parents all their mistakes?
A: I've forgiven their mistakes, but stuff still comes out. Sometimes it's been necessary for me to get to the root of something I'm processing, and often it's in childhood. There are still periods of time when I experience a good deal of anger, but it's not at them. There's a book I was reading called The Fantasy Bond, about how we create bonds in our family of origin based on what we needed in order to survive at that time, and how we continue to re-create those fantasy bonds.
Q: That's basic Freud. Only he'd say you can't stop doing it.
A: I believe you can stop doing it. I have. Takes a lot of work.
Q: OK, enough seriousness. How about some frivolous questions? If you had to take three foods with you to a deserted island for the rest of your life what would they be?
A: And I wasn't going to see anybody else on the island? [Laughs]
Q: Right.
A: Let's see. I don't eat bread, but I love bread--I'd take that Jewish egg bread, challah. I don't eat meat either, but I'd need some protein--I'd say beef stew. And I'd have to have something naughty. Harry's Bar in London has the best chocolate ice cream in the world--it's like mousse--I'd choose that for the third thing.
Q: If you could give up I.Q. points in favor of a physical change of any kind, how many points would you give up and what would the change be?
A: [Laughs] I'd want a higher metabolism and I'd give up five I.Q. points for it.
Q: What Shakespearean role would you most like to play?
A: Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, or Lady Macbeth.
Q: What historical person would you like to have an affair with?
A: Dick Cavett. [Giggles]
Q: Well, he's alive, so I'm not sure he's so historical, but sure.
A: OK, [still giggling] that man in the book Seven Years in Tibet-- Heinrich Harrer.
Q: You don't mean Brad Pitt?
A: No, no, no. Heinrich Harrer.
Q: What profession do you admire most?
A: Anybody who leads a country. It's an unfathomable job to me.
Q: If you could be a fly on the wall anywhere, what wall would it be?
A: My ex-husband's. [Laughs]
Q: What rock song do you wish you'd written?
A: "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
Q: What animal do you think is your spirit animal?
A: The whale. The blue whale.
Q: What saying have you known all your life that holds true for you?
A: "You're only given as much as you can handle at any given time." Whether it's true or not, it gives you the strength.
Q: What musical instrument best expresses you?
A: The cello.
Q: What's your greatest virtue?
A: Generosity.
Q: Are you generous to a fault?
A: Yes.
Q: Are you good with money?
A: Yes and no. I'm good at being miserly and I'm good at being extravagant. It's all about finding the balance. I have someone who watches over my money who I trust implicitly.
Q: Do you know where all your money is?
A: Yes, but only because I've asked for lists and I've had recent conversations and gone over patterns of spending. I don't make a lot of investments, besides property.
Q: Is art your major extravagance?
A: Yes. Of course, there's this house, but that's about building a home for my daughter.
And sometimes I get silly with clothes.
Q: Are you beset by charities that want your money and time?
A: Yes. When it requires my presence, it's easy--I just don't have the time to give. When it requires money, I've chosen where my focus should be. I've worked with various charities, some involving children, family violence, multiple sclerosis. But there's one particular charity I work with the most--Neurofibromatosis, Inc.
Q: Why that one?
A: My brother has the disease. I make appearances for that organization and I addressed Congress about the disease.
Q: What was addressing Congress like?
A: It was challenging using my mind in that way and figuring out what needed to be said. Neurofibromatosis is actually more prevalent than MS, but there are stigmas attached to it because it's similar to the Elephant Man disease, in that it can have those kinds of tumors, only they may not happen till the age of 30.
Q: Is the research progressing?
A: Yes, and the research on NF has helped a lot in other areas, like cancer. What's amazing is that a lot of fans donate to this cause for my birthday or Christmas or my daughter's birthday. It's incredibly generous of them.
Q: Well, since the holidays are coming up, how can somebody who wants to make a donation go about doing that?
A: There's a Web site where you can do it. The address is www.nfinc.org.
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Virginia Campbell is the executive editor of Movieline.