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) but her 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 I was". 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: another 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".
 

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