"I have an odd perspective about it all," she observes, managing to sound quite formal and quite young. “I think it’s some type of survival mechanism for me, but my honest response is, ‘Wow, isn’t that weird?’ And that’s the end of it. There is only so much my brain can comprehend of that stuff before it shuts down. So what if people are fanatical? The only way it can get to be an obstacle is if I base my actions on their opinions. If that’s the way these people want to spend their time, it’s none of my business. Hey, if it keeps kids off the streets, you know?”
Speaking of kids, did Anderson happen to read her costar David Duchovny’s crack in Movieline about how glad he was he wouldn’t have to pay the psychotherapy bills for Anderson’s three-year-old daughter? Duchovny was, of course, joking—in response to the way Piper Maru, a constant fixture on “The X-Files” set, was fearlessly inspecting an oozing, bloody goat’s head that was serving as a prop. “I don’t think it’s necessarily appropriate for him to originate that statement,” Anderson asserts evenly in the measured tone and mildly arch diction she employs when venturing into touchy territory. “But I didn’t have a strong reaction to it, because I recall having made a comment similar to that in jest at one point myself. I feel that right now in her life, liPiper] has a healthy sense of fear that is no more or less natural for a child her age. What’s fascinating is that she can play with a doll for five minutes, then carry around a rubber version of an emaciated sheep’s head as if it were a baby. She can look at someone with physical challenges, and, in her curiosity, still feel love for another human being. I think it’s good that my daughter can look at a man who’s got blood running out of his eyeballs and be compassionate, not terrified.”
Resolving to veer away from the subject of Anderson’s daughter, about whom I’m certain she could talk passionately and endlessly, I ask, “How satisfied are you with the way your career’s going?”
Anderson smiles and lolls back her head to soak up the waning sunlight. “It’s interesting how, after I did a cover story for a magazine last year, my manager [Connie Freiberg] got a phone call from someone saying things like, ‘What an amazing job you’ve done with Gillian’s career!’ and ‘What an amazing career this girl’s had!’ Connie laughed hysterically and said, ‘What career are you talking about? She hasn’t done anything but “The X-Files.””’ Here, for the first time, Anderson laughs airily and not a bit defensively. She knows how far she’s gone on precious little previous experience.
Yet, such is the breakneck nature of Hollywood on-the-job-training and freakish fame that Anderson, who many in town predict will become a movie star, now wields the clout and the self-possession to utter such pronouncements as: “I want to work with Ralph Fiennes, Gary Oldman, Meryl Streep, Patricia Arquette, Isabelle Adjani—people whom I respect, obviously, but also with whom I want to share an energy. I won’t necessarily be in these movies I develop. But if I feel a project is something that needs to be made, a story that needs to be told, then, that’s where I want to be at.”
