Gillian Anderson Biography

Gillian Anderson played agent Dana Scully on the sci-fi TV show The X-Files (1993-2002). The show was a cult hit, making stars of Anderson and her co-star David Duchovny.

The ascendancy of The X-Files matched the mid-1990s boom in the Internet, and Gillian Anderson became one of the first popular Web pinups, along with Pamela Anderson of Baywatch and Teri Hatcher of Superman. Anderson moved into movies as well, starring in the feature film version of The X Files (1998) and the 2000 film of the Edith Wharton novel House of Mirth. In the years since she’s been raising children, working for charities (especially in Africa) and making occasional film appearances and, especially, taking on demanding roles in theater productions.

She returned to series television in a 2012 adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic Great Expectations. Her films include Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005), The Last King of Scotland (2006, starring Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy) and The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008, opposite Duchovny). She returned to television in 2013 in the short-lived series The Fall (co-starring Jamie Dornan), and joined Duchovny in a 2016 mini-series that continued The X-Files.