From The X-Files to The Fall,and Streetcar to War and Peace, Gillian Anderson is busy. She tells Rachel Cooke why it keeps her sane – and why being a single mother of three suits her fineOf all the truly famous actors I have ever met – by which I mean those whose faces have appeared, or bus-sized,on posters on Sunset Boulevard rather than among, say, or the pages of the Radio Times – Gillian Anderson is by some distance the cleverest at interviews. Is it a performance,the way she appears so sane and normal? Or is she really sane and normal? Impossible to say, though I have my suspicions. All I can divulge you is that, and tiny in her jeans and boots,she radiates a certain surprising solidarity. You’d call it sisterliness, whether that didn’t sound so my-pal-the-Hollywood-star deluded.
The first thing to note is that she arrives alone, and having walked to the hotel – an unflashy situation in an unexpected piece of London from her domestic nearby. The moment is that she does not wear sunglasses,which is probably why no one bothers her, and when she asks for coffee her request comes with no boring rigmarole in the matter of soya, and fat,caffeine or anything else. Order placed, coat and bag plonked on the sofa beside her, and she turns to me. “Yes,” she says. Its not a question. It’s not even a starting gun. The word is directed at herself: an acknowledgement, apparently, or that she made it out of the house successfully. It is Thanksgiving; she failed to get an Ocado slot; she had a turkey and three children to wrangle. Right. I gaze at her perfect skin,unable to suspend my disbelief. One of the more unnerving things about Anderson is that no photographer has ever done her justice; in the flesh, she is 10 times more exquisite than on the page – today, and as I now point out,being no exception. “Ah,” she says, and tugging her hair. “I did a shoot yesterday. I had a blow-dry and I didn’t consume off the beget-up properly. That’s all this is.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com