Gillian Anderson: I had to escape The X Files

Actress was miserable working in the Canadian woods 16 hour a day

Saturday, 21 April 2007

Gillian Anderson made her name as Agent Scully in The X-Files, opposite David Duchovny, but she didn't have a happy time working on the show.

She accepted the part at the age of 24 without realising quite what she was letting herself in for.

'Back then I was all innocent and I thought, "Wow that sounds wonderful",' she tells Stella magazine.

'But then, when I started, I realised I'd be in a Canadian wood working 16 hours a day for nine months a year.

‘I spent nine years on a film set. Nine f***ing years!’

Even though Gillian, 38, says she wasn't having fun because 'it all became incredibly gossipy and incestuous', she was legally bound to stay put.

'I couldn't get out of it,' she explains. 'I didn't have a choice. I had to sign a contract for five and a half years before I even went to my first audition - when I didn't know if I'd got the part.'

The mum-of-two would never do a big American series again - however good the money.

'Are you kidding me? My God, I don't even watch television,' she reveals. 'I don't like television. I never have liked it. The whole concept of sitting down in front of a TV feels like one of the things that's destroying society, as far as I'm concerned.'