Gillian Anderson

She’s doing well now, the spectacular Media on American Gods. But when I think of her, I think of her as the woman who sparked the sexual awakening of any number of my friends, male and female, the woman so many of us aspired to be. Strong and independent, intelligent and snarky, a doctor who could hold her own, maybe even be better than her male partner. Gods, we loved her. And she inspired many women to go into the sciences.

She was twenty-four when she was given the script for The X-Files. She’d been acting on stage and swore she wouldn’t do any television, but a year’s unemployment will change your mind. She’d done a bit, but really, her first success was a show she assumed would last only thirteen episodes. And so at first, no, she wasn’t expecting what David Duchovny got, I think. After all, he’d done Twin Peaks and The Red Shoe Diaries and Chaplin and things. But it quickly became apparent to all of us that the show wasn’t the show without Scully there.

Okay. But I didn’t watch the later episodes. And, yes, there was her maternity leave. She was terrified to tell Chris Carter that she was pregnant, because the show was very new, and so was she, and they could have fired her. But by then, Chris Carter knew, and indeed he is the godfather to her daughter, Piper Maru, who has an episode of the show named after her. There are a handful of episodes with Scully gone, but she’s still the center of the show as we wait for her return, because the show isn’t the show without Scully there.

She’s done other things, of course. Between Scully and Media, there has been Widow Wadman and Blanche DuBois. Wallis Simpson and Miss Havisham. Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier. And The Vagina Monologues and A Doll’s House. She works steadily when she wants to work. She’s a fine actress, and I find it simply adorable that she was one of the cops in a school production of Arsenic and Old Lace as a child. I’m sure she’s tired of just being Scully, but I’m also sure she knows that, in the end, we all see her as Scully; I’m kind of waiting for Media to appear as Scully at this point.

She’s long wanted privacy, too, of course. She didn’t show any pictures of her daughter publicly for over a decade; I still don’t know what her daughter looks like. She’s used her fame to promote causes she believes in—I do wish she weren’t a member of PETA; there are better ways to fight for animal rights—but mostly, she lives a quiet, private life. A very public treatment for sex addiction is not her style.