'''Gillian Leigh Anderson''' (born August 9, 1968) is an American Emmy- and Golden Globe Award-winning actress, best known for her role as FBI Agent Dana Scully in the American TV series ''
The X-Files'' and her role as Lady Dedlock in the BBC TV series ''
Bleak House''.
Biography
Early life
She was born in Chicago to Edward and Rosemary Anderson. Soon after her birth her family moved to Puerto Rico for fifteen months and then to Crouch End in London. When she was eleven, her family moved again, this time to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she attended Fountain Elementary and then City Middle/High School, a program for gifted students with a strong emphasis on the humanities; she graduated in 1986. With her English accent and background, she felt out of place in the American Midwest, and developed a reputation as a strong-willed and rebellious teenager. Anderson, mocked because of her British accent, soon developed a Midwest dialect. In addition, she had her nose pierced in the early 1980s, and dyed her hair various colors.
She found an outlet for her talents when she began acting in high school and community theater productions. She had wanted to be a marine biologist, but at 17 after a couple of auditions for the Grand Rapids Community Theater, she gained a few roles and never looked back. She attended Goodman Theater School of Drama at DePaul University in Chicago, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1990, and a few summer school with the National Theatre of Great Britain at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Career
Anderson moved to New York when she was twenty-two, and started her career in 'The Philanthropist' at the Long Wharf Theatre. To support herself when she started out she worked as a waitress. Anderson did a lot of theatre work and won much critical acclaim, including a 1990-91 Theatre World Award for he role in the play 'Absent Friends' produced by Alan Ayckbourn which ran at the Manhattan Theatre Club.
She moved to Los Angeles in 1991/92, spending a year auditioning. Although she had once vowed she would ''never do TV'', being out of work for a year changed her mind. Anderson did ''Home Fires Burning'' for a cable station as well as the audiocassette version of ''Exit to Eden.'' She broke mainstream television in 1993, with a guest appearance on the collegiate drama ''Class of '96'' on the fledgling Fox Network.
As a result of her guest appearance in ''Class of 96'', Anderson was sent the script for ''The X Files'' at the age of 24. She decided to audition as: "for the first
