Gillian Anderson has gone her
own way, and in most instances without a road map.Anderson's
experience with The X-Files
hasn't just changed her professional career (although landing the part
was,
as it turned out, clearly the
break of a lifetime) buther entire life, in ways that even she could hardly
have foreseen at the time.It
is also a truly inspiring success story, told by someone only now beginning
to absorb the flow of events
that took her from the brink of going back to waiting tables to television
stardom."At the time it always
seems like forever,"Anderson says. "It's only in retrospect and reading
about other people's paths that
i realize how lucky Iwas". Anderson's odyssey began when she decided
to audition for a community
play while still attending high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Already well-traveled by that
point, Anderson was born August 9 in Chicago before her family moved
to Puerto Rico and then London,
where she spent the next nine years. The Andersons (father Edward runs
a film postproduction company,
mother Rosemary is a computer analyst) returned to the United States,
settling in Grand Rapids when
Gillian, the oldest of three children, was 11. Somewhat wild as a
teenager, Anderson nonetheless
harbored scientific aspiration before the acting bug bit her in high school.
"Somehow, I have no idea how the transition was made from wanting to be
an archeologist or a marine biologist to wanting to be an
actress, but it just kind of
happened," she says. Anderson returned to Chicago to study acting at
DePaul University's Goodman
Theatre School and was noticed by some New York-based
William Morris agents at an
actors' showcase. They offered to represent her in pursuing acting as
a career if she moved to New
York, and in short order she loaded up the car and moved to the
Big Apple at the age of 22.
Working as a waitress to support
herself, Anderson received the first in a series of fortuitous breaks when
actress Mary-Louise Parker dropped out the off-Broadway play Absent
Friendstwo weeks into rehearsal in order to take a role in the movie Grand
Canyon. Producers were left in a frantic rush to replace Parker, and anderson
got the part, ultimately winning a Theatre World Award for her performance.
Toiling as a waitress in two different places after what she modestly
deems her "mild success" in Absent Friends, the actress continued
to go out on auditions and after a disheartening dry spell was offered
three different roles in the same day: anothe off Broadway play; a low-budget
feature that ended upbeing called The Turning, which starred Tess
Harper and Karen
Allen; and The Philanthropist,
a Christpoher Hampton play being staged at a theatre in New Haven, Connecticut.
Because he play in New York would have conflicted with the other projects,
Anderson opted to make a
two-for-one swap and take the
other two parts, doing the movie and then The Philanthropist. As
it turned out, the latter ultimately
led her to Los Angeles after she became involved with another
actor, following him to the
West Coast and eventually moving in with him. "I'm not sure if I
hadn't made those choices that
i would be doing The X-Files right now," she muses. Still
enamored with the idea of achieving
film stardom, Anderson endured considerable fustration
after arriving in the movie
mecca. "First of all, I swore I'd never move to Los Angeles," she
admits, "and once I did, I swore
I'd never do television. It was only after being out of work for
almost a year that I began going
in [ to audition] on some stuff that I would pray that I wouldn't
get because I didn't want to
be involved in it".