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Piper Anderson, "the Most Important, Grounding Influence in My Life"

Gillian Anderson's life changed for the better after her daughter's birth.

TL;DR

March 11, 1995: Klotz, then the production designer-a man crew members describe as "very talented, very gentle"-and married him on the spur of the moment on New Year's Day, 1994, on the 17th hole of a magnificent Kauai golf course ("because that was the most beautiful place we could find on short notice," says Anderson). Even her hairdresser didn't know what was going on. "I didn't have a clue she was getting married," says Marsden. "It just really stunned me."

Anderson was a little stunned herself. Unbeknownst to her at the time, the happy couple conceived their daughter, Piper, who is now 6 months old. on their wedding day. When Anderson got back to the mainland, she says, "I was at a party that Fox gave for at a Burbank Airport hangar, and there were fortune-tellers. So I sat down, and the fortune-teller said to me: 'You are going to have a little girl soon.' And I said, 'I am not!' A month or so later, I started feeling nauseous." And happy. And very, very worried. A pregnancy would mean limitations on her work schedule and missing episodes - no one could predict how many - in the second season. "I knew I needed to make my decision about the pregnancy first, before broaching the subject with the producers," says Anderson. "I couldn't be wavering. Having this baby was the right decision for my husband and me. But it was like, 'Oh... They did all this for me and now look what I'm doing to them.' So many things go through your mind. So yes, I was worred...."

Mommy's pretty busy, too. Anderson heads back to her trailer immediately after each shot to check on her baby girl, who's now sleeping. "I have had the best over this past year," whispers Anderson. "And, I am beat. I have thought that all of was too much. But having Piper has saved my life." How? "It took the focus off of me and put it on something much more important."

IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

September 1994: Anderson married former X-Files production designer, Vancouver's Clyde Klotz, in Hawaii this past New Year's Day. "It was difficult to find a minister," she says. "There was a Buddhist temple down the street, so we talked to this nice [priest]. He drove us to this golf course and showed us this spot down by the ocean." They tied the knot on the 17th hole. Since then, Anderson's first pregnancy, which reaches full term this month, has been hidden with careful camera angles and very creative wardrobe. Her baby will be global citizen of Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

October 1994:

EXTRA: Now your Piper was born September 25th?

GILLIAN: That's correct, yeah.

EXTRA: Now do you bring her to the set with you?

GILLIAN: Yes most of the time I do. She's, well she's in my trailer. It seems a few times she's actually come on set we've had to do the take over again because somewhere in the background is waaa, crying or laughing or something.

EXTRA: So you bring her everyday?

GILLIAN: Pretty much. I'm working into half days to see how that works out but I'm fortunate to be able to have a nanny with me on set all the time and so I'm very lucky to be able to do that and sometimes I think it works better that she can stay home and doesn't have to be in the confines of a trailer and often she doesn't like that she wants to be near mommy which makes perfect sense.

EXTRA: Now how do you reconcile being a new mom and a full time actress?

GILLIAN: I don't know, I don't think I have. I think it's just hitting me. I don't know. I'm just doing it and hoping I don't fall flat on my face.

November 1994: Host Leora Kornfeld started asking about GA's new baby, 8 weeks old tomorrow (GA first says "8 months"), born in Vancouver, and therefore half Canadian, half American.

March 11, 1995: Klotz, then the production designer-a man crew members describe as "very talented, very gentle"-and married him on the spur of the moment on New Year's Day, 1994, on the 17th hole of a magnificent Kauai golf course ("because that was the most beautiful place we could find on short notice," says Anderson). Even her hairdresser didn't know what was going on. "I didn't have a clue she was getting married," says Marsden. "It just really stunned me."

Anderson was a little stunned herself. Unbeknownst to her at the time, the happy couple conceived their daughter, Piper, who is now 6 months old. on their wedding day. When Anderson got back to the mainland, she says, "I was at a party that Fox gave for at a Burbank Airport hangar, and there were fortune-tellers. So I sat down, and the fortune-teller said to me: 'You are going to have a little girl soon.' And I said, 'I am not!' A month or so later, I started feeling nauseous." And happy. And very, very worried. A pregnancy would mean limitations on her work schedule and missing episodes - no one could predict how many - in the second season. "I knew I needed to make my decision about the pregnancy first, before broaching the subject with the producers," says Anderson. "I couldn't be wavering. Having this baby was the right decision for my husband and me. But it was like, 'Oh... They did all this for me and now look what I'm doing to them.' So many things go through your mind. So yes, I was worred...."

Mommy's pretty busy, too. Anderson heads back to her trailer immediately after each shot to check on her baby girl, who's now sleeping. "I have had the best over this past year," whispers Anderson. "And, I am beat. I have thought that all of was too much. But having Piper has saved my life." How? "It took the focus off of me and put it on something much more important."

June 19, 1995: “[Chris Carter] was very moved by the experience I went through of having a child,” says Anderson, whose 9-month-old daughter, Piper, is Carter’s godchild.

October 9, 1995: Anderson, one of the most cool headed heroines ever on a TV series, is all maternal warmth off camera. Between scenes, she beelines for her trailer, where a nanny helps her care for Piper, her 1 year old daughter.

"Hello, baby," she coos as Piper toddles toward her. "She loves the crew," adds Anderson. "It's like having dozens of mommies and daddies...."

Executives at Fox initially wanted someone with less radiance and more vavoom as Scully, but Carter insisted that she had the no nonsense integrity the role required. Then, just as the show was taking off, Anderson married Clyde Klotz, the series art director at the time, and soon became pregnant with Piper. (They now share a three bedroom Vancouver home.)

She worried she'd be dropped from the series, but Carter stuck by her again. "Part of the show's success is the audience's investment in these characters," he says. He created an alien abduction that kept her off camera long enough for labor, delivery and 10 day maternity leave. Now "I can't imagine not having Piper," says Anderson, who chose Carter to be her baby's godfather.

January 1996: QUESTION: "I think I speak for all the women here when I say that your character Scully is a real role model for all women [much applause] and I wanted to ask you if you get to take Piper with you, like today, and what it's like to have her on the set with you if you can?"

GILLIAN: "Sure, thank you. I do get to bring Piper with me everyday; that's something I'm incredibly blessed to be able to do. What I usually do, if I have to leave really early in the morning is I'll --she'll be at home with the nanny, and then I'll have somebody come and pick them up like around maybe 2 hours before lunch and then she'll spend the rest of the day with me. And then, or usually later on in the week, if I have to go to work much later she'll come with me at the beginning and then I send her home early so she can go to bed. And she's there entertaining everybody. She's the most amazing little girl and she's really -- I really miss her right now-- she's really strong and she loves to be on set. She loves everybody. What's funny is that on the Friday nights that I have to work really late and she's at home with the nanny and the show's on, she'll like walk up to the TV and point to me and start to cry. She's changed my life and, I mean, I honestly don't know how women -- I mean, I went back to work ten days after I gave birth, but most women have to go back financially within three months of a baby. I don't understand how somebody can go through that and not be near that child for 8-10 hours a day at that period of the child's development, and I feel for everybody who has ever had to do that and wish it weren't so."

QUESTION: "You've talked a little bit about stunts. Do you do your own stunts besides running in the heels?" [Laughter]

GILLIAN: "Um, it's funny, I did a lot -- a lot more -- not all of them, but I did a lot more before I had Piper. When you get pregnant and your body changes and your knees get all out of joint and stuff. I came back and I didn't feel, you know -- I wasn't walking straight, I wasn't doing anything right, and this was after I had Piper. It took a long time for my body to heal. And, um, so it didn't feel safe to do any kind of jumping or -- I'll remember shortly -- I can't remember what episode it was -- whether it was.... No, it was one episode where all I had to do was just, um -- oh, it was the one where -- you could probably tell me better than I know -- where a bullet just grazes my head [she points to that poor abused temple]."...

QUESTION: "Young at Heart."

GILLIAN: "No, that's not it. Though you're right; that was the one with the salamander hand. --The one where I get shot in the hotel." Me: "That's it." GA [slightly confused, as crowd is responding]: Alright. [Laughing.] It's a long life, honey. U, yes, 'Young at Heart.' So, I was shot in the hallway and I had protective vest on. I had hip pads on, and butt pads, and chest pads, and back pads, and I was supposed to be shot and they wanted to see my face -- they wanted to see that it was me that was flying backwards. So what I had to do, which was part of the stunt, is out of nowhere just like throw myself back off my feet on to my back on to the floor -- we had to get into the rhythm of it and the shooting of it. I guess it was what I needed to do. So I did that, you know, quite a few times, and you know I had a couple bruises, and they were also shooting from a balcony up top so they really needed to see my face. So we did like take after take after take and, um, that was fine, but wh at I didn't know at the time which, I learned a couple of months later, is that I was pregnant at the time, um, you know. So when I actually put that together, which might have been months later, it was just kinda like 'Whoaa, is that ever weird.' I mean, I had no idea."

QUESTION: "We're all glad everything turned out okay."

GILLIAN: "Me too -- thank you." ...

QUESTION: "First of all we all love you, Gillian -- as if you didn't know that yet. Is there any special reason why you named your daughter Piper?"

GILLIAN: "Um, well, it's hard to find a name for a child, and I went through so many different names as I'm sure everybody does, and this little thing inside me -- I started to really get an idea of her personality at about the seventh month, and she was jumping around, kicking at me. I mean, you could see her feet, you could pratically see the imprint -- she's got big feet -- see the imprint of her feet on my belly. And I could tell from the feeling of the child growing inside me that she was very spunky, but she was also very strong. And after going through so many names and so many names, my husband was reading a list of names from an old yearbook of his and was just going down the list and he landed on the name and it was like [snaps fingers] bingo, you know -- I automatically knew it was her."

QUESTION: "I bet it was really hard when you were pregnant on the X-Files, was it hard for you?"

GILLIAN: "Yeah, it started to get really hard when I gained *a lot* of weight. I'm short, and I gained a lot of weight. [Someone in crowd yells, "No, you didn't!"] What?! I GAINED 52 POUNDS! I'm 5'3". I gained 52 -- I gained a lot of weight! Those big trenchcoats helped -- they did -- they hid me well, but I did I gained a lot of weight. What was the question? Oh yeah, my feet got really swollen and it was hard to stay on my feet for so many hours at a time. I had to sit down a lot, and that's mostly when it became hard, and then after when she was born not being able to spend as much time with her those first few weeks as I would've liked to."

October 1996: In September 1994, Gillian gave birth to her daughter, Piper Maru Anderson. The actress says that Piper helped her stay sane through all the stresses and strains of making The X-Files.

May 1997: Gillian Anderson's trailer is much larger than David Duchovny's, but then, she comes with more baggage. There is the type that makes her happy – the type that comes with sharing a space with her daughter, Piper, and the 2-year-old's nanny. And then there is the variety that makes her want to bolt the door and never emerge – like the tabloid stories of her marital separation from freelance art director Clyde Klotz and the sexual-assault charges (made by other women) facing a man she had supposedly been dating. So, if Anderson's on-set accommodations are more plush than her co-star's, she certainly deserves the cocoon in which to escape.

It's 4 o'clock, and we've just now reached the midday break. In a short while, Anderson, 28, will be lying prone on a makeshift operating table; but at the moment, she is warming lunch in the microwave and popping a cassette into the VCR while Piper naps in the trailer's second room. The video is for a one-off dance single she has cut with an ambient-music group called Hal, and the video, well..."It's all me," says Anderson. "All me in every respect, and it's a bit too erotic for what I need to be doing right now." She laughs. "It's going to change...."

On the set, Anderson bides her time by mothering her daughter and the rest of the crew. At one point, when director Rob Bowman is unhappy with a take and throws down his headphones, Anderson walks behind the lens and says, "Rob? Sweetie? Are you OK?" It is as if Anderson's own fragility disappears when she takes on the responsibility of others....

Q: Do you feel like you're the same person you were when the show started?

GA: No even close.

Q: Is that a good thing?

GA: It's a very good thing. Everything was very heavy for me for most of my life, continuing into the beginning of this show. I carried a lot of things in my head and in my heart. Over the past two years, greatly due to Piper, my perspective has changed. Suddenly there was a very palpable, important reason for me to get better and to grow up.

October 1997: Since The XF's first season, she has gotten married, after the briefest of courtships, to the show's assistant art director, Clyde Klotz, followed up with an unplanned pregnancy (which nearly got her removed from the series but, on a happier note, resulted in the birth of her beloved daughter, Piper Maru) and , recently, became a single gal, again. For all that, GA keeps hurtling herself through life, trying to be reflective about her misadventures....

US: Your daughter is a fixture on the XF set. Does it encourage or inhibit her creative mind to know that boogeymen are made in a makeup trailer?

GILLIAN: Piper's curious about life in general. I think that comes part from being around such a creative enviroment. We have prosthetic people and aliens walking around all the time. She wants to touch them, wants them to hold her. If there's someone who has an eyeball hanging out of their face, she'll reach out and say, "Can I touch?" and then say {sympathetically}, "ohhh. I'm sorry." I think it's been healthy for her. She loves the crew, and they love her energy.

US: Has motherhood forced you to do things that you would never imagine yourself doing in the pre-Piper days?

GILLIAN: I can't imagine stepping foot in a Chuck E. Cheese. But if Piper wants to go for her seventh birthday, I'm taking her. I'm preparing myself now for the plastic insanity of it. And the noise. Unless it's a U2 concert and I've geared myself up for the entertainment aspect of it, I will not put myself in a situation where there are a lot of people who are loud and fake. [pause] I'm not saying that people who go to Chuck E. Cheese are fake. It's just that in those situations, I feel like I've stepped into another dimension of reality and I'm afraid that I'll never get out.

US: Piper is an interesting name. What else were you thinking of calling her?

GILLIAN: My name is pronounced with a soft g, not a hard one. It's Gill like jam, as opposed to gun. I wanted to keep the soft g in the family. I was thinking of Geneva, but it's too pretentious. But that sat in my head for a day--I think I saw a street sign. You know, there's a certain point when you're pregnant that you can look at a candy wrapper and think you've found a name. I mean, I could have named her Saccharine.

US: Has Piper done anything recently that you just didn't expect?

GILLIAN: She must have seen Beauty and the Beast at her cousin's house, because she hasn't seen it with me. But lately, when you play games with her, you say "What's your name?" and she always says [coy, girlish voice], "I'm Beauty." I mean, that's so not who she is. [contemplatively] She's constantly surprising me about how much of a girl she is. I was a tomboy. And she's a tomboy, too. I mean, I'd think she'd more likely to play the Beast, and she's into playing Beauty. I guess that 's my own projection. Because I would have definately been the Beast. That's the power role, right?

US: Are there other ways she reminds you of yourself?

GILLIAN: Well, Piper's very outgoing. When I was 6 or 7, something switched and I closed down quite a bit. But I have a very strong memory of myself at her age as being very alive and happy and social. And she's that way. She also likes to get away with things. There's this mischievousness about her that I completely identify with myself as a kid....

US: Did you marriage turn you off to whirlwind courtships?

GILLIAN: At the time, everybody said, "It's not long enough" and "You guys should date for a while." Now I honestly have to say--although I don't think it's a mistake, because he's great person and we have Piper--but if I ever get married again, it will be after knowing someone for a long time first.

February 15, 1998: Gillian Anderson is strongly protective of her 4-year-old daughter, Piper. Says Anderson’s mother, Rosemary, “Motherhood has been enormously healthy for her. She’s more secure.” ...

No longer the sidekick, Gillian (pronounced “Jillian”) Anderson has watched her popularity propel her to the top tier of her profession, financially and artistically. Now, she says, she’s ready to stretch as an actress: “People can’t tell right now that I can do other things. I’d like to do a comedy. I’d like to play a vixen. I’d like to do everything you don’t see in Scully.”

At the same time, she is struggling to maintain her balance, with a non-stop workload, frenzied fans and a 4-year-old daughter. “The only thing I care about,” she says, sitting in her trailer one evening during an X-Files shoot, “is that I’m perceived as a hard worker. This is what I love to do. This is my job.” ...

Her daughter, Piper Maru, is a fixture on the X-Files set, and on this day is being carried around piggyback by the actress. The cherubic child, with her straight bangs and tiny rain boots, has been adopted by the cast and crew and often raids the prop truck for bloodied fake hands to wave about.

May 10, 1998: Woman: It is great for kids too. It's perfect for children. We have Peter Rabbit....

Gillian: You know what? My daughter's not here and if I went there and looked at Peter Rabbit, I might start to cry, so I think I'll pass, but thank you!...

Young girl: This Mother's Day, I would like to wish you a Happy Mother's Day since you have a little daughter.

Gillian: Thank you!...

Woman: Couple of things: First off, you sounded so sad yesterday about the idea of Piper not being here. We bought you something - bad nutritional food! (an't make out the words) to die off...or I'll give it to charity!

(*Gillian laughs*) ...

Gillian: [Discussing single parenthood and career] Well it is [tough], but you know...I mean...the thing that I have, that I am incredibly fortunate with, is that I am able to have a nanny who comes to set with me every day with my daughter and goes home with me at night if I need her and, you know, that aspect of it is not available to a lot of people so, you know, I don't really feel like I am a single working mother because I am fortunate enough to be in that situation whereas there's a lot of women and a lot of single fathers out there who can't and still have to make ends meet and stuff...so it is a little bit different but I completely appreciate the kind of work that it does take...so, it's great....

Woman: It must be specially tough on Piper because, I mean, I know you really love your daughter very much and try to get as much time as you can...that's very hard scheduling that....

Gillian: It is and there is a huge tendency to feel guilt on a daily basis but, one thing about Piper and also about the opportunity that she has had to move around so much and to be involved with so many people - she is incredibly resilient and she is very very strong and she is really able to kind of get back up on her feet and to understand...she understands that I will always come back again, you know, because when she was little and I'd leave for what must have seemed like forever for her - to go to set to shoot something and come back - she always knew that I came back. So she always knows now when I have to go out of town for a weekend or when I have a photo shoot during the day, that she, and I tell her you know... we sit down and I say, "Look sweetheart, I'd rather be with you. I want you to know that I love you very much but I need to do this and I will be back later tonight and we will have this amount of time to spend together." And so, by just keeping an open language with her and letting her in on everything that is happening, I think she really kind of clues in on the fact that she is loved and she is safe and that we are going to have time together....

Gillian: There have been other characters that I have played in my life that I have had trouble taking home, but I think that...I learned very early, in just the schedule, that there just was no time for that. You know, there was no time for me to take it any further than set when I leave because there is so much else to do when I'm off set and I have to put my focus on my daughter and on other things that, I think there's a survival mechanism...I just didn't allow myself to.

June 11, 1998: I love Star Wars. I’m not familiar with Star Trek myself but my daughter actually, is a bigger Star Trek fan.

June 14 1998: Anderson insists "at the moment, it's just my daughter and I. A relationship takes much more energy and focus than I have to give right now. I certainly haven't given up on relationships. I want to have at least one more child. Piper is the most important grounding influence in my life." ...

She is quick to admit that Duchovny seeks more input into the show than she does, adding: "I'm allowed to speak my mind as much as I like. I just don't know how much is heard. The plot and characters don't interest me as much as they do David. I have Piper to occupy me. I can hardly wait to get back to my trailer to be with her. My fantasy is to live where I choose with my daughter and to do one or two feature films a year."

June 1998: "I'M SORRY, I'm in a lot of pain." For Gillian Anderson, the shoot has gotten worse. A few years ago, her daughter Piper Maru accidentally sliced Gillian's right cornea with her fingernail, and now, after a few hours of bobbing in a tank of water mixed with milk and chlorine, to film a plot point no one will explain to me, her eye is as red and swollen as a bee sting. As a medic flushes Anderson's eye with saline, the actress calmly says, "Holy s-t." Small and muscled in a tank top, with a gymnast's tight physique, Anderson, twenty-nine, handles the pain stoically as she sits in her trailer....

Her three-year-old daughter, born during the second season of The X-Files (Anderson is divorced from Piper's father, Chris Klotz, a former X-Files assistant art director), comes into the trailer, and Anderson gives a big smile. "Hi, Pumpkin!" Anderson says. But the girl seems startled by the pallor of Mom's powdery make-up. "You've got donuts on your face," Piper says.

August 16, 1998: Her own daughter, Piper, now nearly four, has been begging for a baby brother or sister. "I hope I'll be able to provide one before she goes into that stage where she doesn't want one. I don't want one before the next three years." Did you plan her? "No." I read that you got pregnant on honeymoon. "On the wedding day, she was conceived. Very romantic, and thank God that I did have her." A pause. Uh, because she's the main focus in your life? "Mmm-hmm. In a healthy way, though. She's my priority." A pause....

She's now on good terms with her husband. It took two years for them to become amicable. Piper, she says, has weathered it all very well. "She's a healthy, loving, stable, focused little girl." A trouper. "But growing inside of a mummy who works until a few days before you are born helps forge you into a trouper."

She does want to have other children, but would she prefer to be in a relationship that was a family scenario? "Eventually I would. I have mixed feelings. For a long time I always believed that people are in each other's lives for a reason, and we learn from them, and then we learn from someone else and someone else. I'm starting to have a bit of a desire for longevity of a relationship and to experience that." The longest relationship she's ever had was three years. Outside of her work and her daughter, with the time left over she likes to write, draw, she collects modern art, and prints by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

December-January 1998: "I feel that right now [I]n her life, Piper has a healthy sense of fear that is no more or less natural or 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 its good that my daughter can look at a man who's got blood running out of his eyeballs and be compassionate, not terrified."

February 1999: A small purple bike with training wheels is propped against the hedge outside Gillian Anderson's California beach house. Anderson answers the door looking girlish and natural - not a drop of makeup on, her hair held back in a simple white band. These are her temporary digs, she explains as she and her enormous dog, Cleo, lead the way to the living room; her new house is undergoing renovation. Mental note: Neither Anderson's Golden Globe nor her Emmy is in plain sight.

It's hard to believe now, but just days before Anderson landed her starring role on The X-Files, she was collecting her last unemployment check. Now in its sixth season, the series has spawned millions of X-philes - and launched Anderson into both movies and modeling. With a new film, Playing by Heart, opening nationwide, Anderson's schedule is especially demanding these days. It's easy to wonder how she manages to spend any time with her 4-year-old daughter, Piper. (Anderson and Piper's dad, former X-Files art director Clyde Klotz, are divorced.) Her solution: Almost every day is "take your daughter to work" day. Piper has been an unofficial member of the X-Files crew since the morning Anderson returned to work - just ten days after her C-section. And Piper got to make friends on the set of Playing by Heart too (her best pal: Sean Connery).

It may not seem like it from afar, but Anderson's life is like that of millions of young career moms: Her days are long and taxing she struggles to find a balance between work and home, and there's just one thing she longs for: more time....

REDBOOK: You're a well-paid and famous working mom, but a working mom nevertheless. How do you cope?

GILLIAN: When Piper was born I was so naive. I thought, How does anybody do this? How does anybody stay sane? Fortunately, she wasn't colicky for more than a couple of days, but I was getting no sleep as it was. Now, I am a single mom and working, but I am not battling what that normally implies because luckily I can afford to have full-time help.

REDBOOK: How did you find your nanny?

GILLIAN: I met her in a Starbucks in Vancouver. She walked over to where we were and talked to Piper in such a grounded and open way - really listening to her. She's just wonderful - and Piper adores her.

REDBOOK: Divorce can be tough. How have you dealt with it?

GILLIAN: Her father and I have worked very hard at being friends. Everything comes back to what is in Piper's best interest. She understands that we live in two separate places and that we are not married anymore, but that we both love her very much.

REDBOOK: No matter how hard you try, aren't there moments when you think that you just aren't living up to the challenge?

GILLIAN: There was a period of time where I went through a tremendous amount of guilt. I was trying to figure out what would be best for her. It was incredibly painful and difficult and stressful. Now I try to have her on the set with me whenever I can. I try to take her to school. I'll ask the production people, "If you can just start this scene a little later then I can pick up Piper." But whatever else I have to deal with or whatever bad mood I'm in, I try to push it away until after she's asleep or when she's with her dad. It doesn't work all the time. Some days I come in and I'm like, "You know what, sweetie, I really don't want to get down on my hands and knees right now-I'm tired." ...

REDBOOK: Your daughter is 4. By now I'm sure you're beginning to see the things that make her special.

GILLIAN: Oh, absolutely. But I've known her since the seventh month of my pregnancy, can you believe that? That's when I connected with Piper. She is the person that I felt in my stomach. I felt her personality and she is all that I knew - alive and unique and strong and independent and kind and compassionate. She has so much energy and life, and she's fearless. She's very straightforward. I see a lot of myself in Piper, and there's more to come. I know that I'll pay for that - I was notoriously difficult in high school and I guess she'll get her turn when she's in her teens.

REDBOOK: What does she do that surprises you?

GILLIAN: She's so inquisitive. She asks the most amazing questions. She wants to know everything - why the waves don't stop, what's inside trees, what's inside umbrellas, how we see. I answer the ones that I can and the others I say, "You know what sweetie, I really don't know, but maybe we can find out together."

REDBOOK: Where did you find out the secret to being a good mother? Or is there a secret?

GILLIAN: I had a sense of what was missing in the way that I was brought up - and that's nothing against my mother and my father because they honestly did the very best that they could. But there were certain areas where I could have used more help and understanding. Those are the things that I focus on with Piper.

REDBOOK: Don't stop there. What was missing in your childhood?

GILLIAN: I could have heard more that I was okay just the way I was, that I was enough. My daughter knows that she's okay. I let her make mistakes. You get to learn a lot as a mom. I can see clearly that what is most difficult for me is relinquishing control. Piper and I were sitting out on the porch making drawings with glue and sand. It took everything in my power not to scrape around corners of the panda and lion that she was making so they would look more perfect. But then it wouldn't have been hers. That's how I get to learn to let go and allow her to be a child. I'm not saying that she has to be perfect, but that she's perfect just the way she is.

November 2000: She'd made the commitment to have her daughter, Piper, begin her schooling in Vancouver on the belief that she'd be living there. At the same time, the young mom figured she'd be more of a full-time mother than she is....

It's a challenge, though, she says. "It's challenging because Piper started first grade and I think it's important that she be in one place instead of traveling back and forth. So she's going to school in Canada this year and I am going up there every few episodes to be with her."

She admits the arrangement is inconvenient, but says, "yes but there's a lot of things that would be more convenient but they're not, It's just basically trying to find the best scenario for the situation at the moment. And this is the situation that we're in right now and this is the best way to handle it."

There is a hint of sarcasm to her voice, and she won't deny that committing to the show and being forced to be separated from her daughter was something she simply had no choice but to accept.

December 2000: Off-screen, she's busier than ever, dividing her time between her Malibu beach home and Vancouver, Canada, where her 6 year old daughter, Piper resides with her father and now attends school. So, what is the story behind her return for not just one season but a ninth too? ...

Q: Chris [Carter] said they made some compensations for you to spend more time in Canada with your daughter. Did that make the decision to stay easier?

GA: Yes. It's a complicated issue. Chris and the writers want to produce the best show they can and there is a particular formula for making that work in a season when we are losing David for most of the episodes and bringing in a new character. To suddenly have the character of Scully to be absent from time to time was a tall order, but it was an absolute necessity for me in continuing, and fortunately they have been very generous and tried very hard to make that possible for me to spend more time with her. As much as anyone can say, 'Oh she can visit you on the set when she's in LA,' it's not the same as having quality time with a child. She's starting first grade and I think it's important that she be in one place instead of travelling back and forth, so she's in one place and I'm travelling back and forth, which I think is better for her.

Q: Can you protect Piper from your fame?

GA: The older she gets, the more she sees. Most of the time when I'm out in public and somebody asks for an autograph, if I'm with her I usually say no. When she was younger I didn't want her to witness other people treating me specially, but things slipped through the cracks and so she's seen it and knows what is going on and it is an incredible challenge. I am incredibly fortunate and incredibly blessed to have a constant job and be paid what I get paid to stand in front of a camera, so the financial security is great. But the challenge is for her not to come to expect that and expose her to the way the rest of the world lives. We spent some time in London last summer and I purposefully took her on the subway every single day - it was great to see her sit in the midst of every race and culture and she was just in awe because she lives in such a homogenized world.

March 27, 2001: A friendly man, Carter enjoys close relationships with the people he works with. He’s the godfather to Gillian Anderson’s daughter, Piper, 6. Anderson says he is “incredibly supportive, incredibly inquisitive and a wonderful storyteller.”

May 19-21, 2001: The actress, who finished work on the last episode of the season a month before its Sunday airdate, is happily spending her break relaxing in her Malibu home with six-year-old daughter Piper.

"I decided I needed some time off," she says. "I get to play with Piper and I have hired a French tutor. Piper goes to French school, so I am constantly being asked things I have no idea about." ...

Nevertheless, she does go "out in the world freely" and last summer showed Piper around London, England, where Anderson spent nine years of her childhood....

And although she enjoyed directing an episode of The X-Files, she says it's so time-consuming that she can't imagine doing it again until Piper is at least 16. But Anderson makes no secret of the fact that she's ready to move on. When her contract expires after next season, she wants to return to the stage.

July 2002: The actress's daughter Piper is seven now, and while she remains an only child, Scully's parenthood meant she had to get used to seeing her mother playing Mommy to another child, something which can lead to problems with real life siblings. "She thought it was quite funny, actually. She is at a stage right now where she gets it. She gets it for the first time and she can kind of go, 'Oh, that's what Mom does when she goes to work. Okay.' She gets the public aspect of it and the work aspect of it. It's interesting to watch her process and then awaken to that process."

That aspect of Piper's life is about to change though, as the actress has been adamant that she's finished with weekly TV.

September 2002: XFM: Speaking of kids, how excited is your daughter Piper about the likelihood of having you home more often?

GA: Well, she's not necessarily going to have me back home. She's going to be doing a lot more traveling is what she's going to be doing. I don't know what she's feeling right now. I mean, we've had a couple of conversations about it and she's just at that age right now where she's starting to understand what it is that Mommy's being doing for her lifetime. And I think she has, for the first time, a bit of a romantic view of what that is, and I'm trying to break that down as quickly as possible!

October 26, 2002: The phenomenal success of The X-Files frightened her. Prior to this she was unemployed, had no apartment, no car. She went from being a 24-year-old woman with an aspiration to make it in theatre or film "to public scrutiny, very afraid, feeling invaded". And she married - in the first season of the show - the set designer Clyde Klotz. A Buddhist monk performed the ceremony on the 17th hole of a golf course in Hawaii, not symbolic, she says - almost there, nearly home and dry - "but because it was a beautiful spot on the edge of the ocean with a single tree".

Within months she had given birth to their daughter Piper and, before Piper was one, the marriage had fallen apart and they divorced. All evidence, if she needed it, of trauma, a search for security, and presumably failure. Not only failure, she says. "I think we married because we were meant to have this extraordinary child." Piper, who is now eight, lives with her father in Vancouver and Anderson flies there alternate months to be with her daughter. It's not ideal. But Klotz, she says, is a nice man. "We have good relations; he's a good father. With him, Piper gets to feel grounded, she has all his family around. And with me she gets to see the world."

August 28, 2005: When she moved to London, her 11-year-old daughter, Piper, stayed with Klotz in Vancouver; recently, however, she has moved to London. Anderson is straightforward about the old arrangement. 'It was healthy for her to be in one place. She had so much family there on her father's side, and friends. I said, "I'll be the traveller, I'm in a position to do that." But we were just winging it, really.'

Does Piper understand the nature of her mother's fame? 'For years, she didn't, even though she was on set for the series; she didn't get that that's not what everyone's parents do. It wasn't until I took her on a Harry Potter set - she was fascinated - that it meant something. She is incredibly well-adjusted. Sometimes, she does get impressed - if I know someone in a movie she likes. But that's just a natural stage. At some point, most kids have posters up.'

She has no qualms about life in London. 'It is unfortunate that this [the terrorist attacks] happened right when my daughter was coming here. But this is where we have decided to make our home, and I'm one of those people who don't like to act on fear, whether it's in my work or my personal life. Something might happen, but acting on that would feel like giving in, somehow.'

May 7, 2006: Ten days after giving birth to their daughter, Piper, now 11, she was back on set....

Only after the series ended did she realise how unhappy this had made her. 'Not at the time. I had no frame of reference.' She does remember feeling very low during her pregnancy (she started having panic attacks at this time), and after her daughter's birth, and when Piper started reaching first for the nanny.

'You know, early twenties, all the emotions, and I had a baby, and then a divorce, and I was on a brand-new series that was doing well, and all the publicity surrounding that, all the nonsense about David and I, and there were times when it was unbearable.' Hastily, humbly, she adds, 'And yet, I was so fortunate to be a part of something that was so exceptional. We did have fun.' ...

Considering she has such a fine line in corseted women whose lives depend absolutely on discretion and steely self-discipline (Bleak House's Lady Dedlock, a wonderfully nuanced performance for which she is deservedly up for a Bafta; Lily Bart in The House of Mirth), it's all the more interesting that Anderson is so impulsive, so open. Having taken a shine to a Starbucks barrista who was sweet to Piper, she hired her on the spot as a nanny (the girl turned out to be fantastic). Clearly, Anderson likes risk....

But she and Piper will remain in London? 'Yeah. For now. And maybe we'll be here in 20 years. Or maybe I'll fall in love with Spain. Or India. Who knows? Things are all changing right now. This is really good,' she says, jabbing at the plate with her spoon. 'It's really hard to stop eating. Will you finish it off when I've left?'

The meter's about to run out again. She has to go to the wholefood shop, Fresh and Wild, and then collect Piper from school.

December 6, 2010: Gillian now lives in London with daughter Piper, 16, from first husband Clyde Klotz, and sons Oscar, four, and Felix, two, with partner Mark Griffiths....

“WHEN I moved with my parents from London to America at 11, I hated it.

There was part of me which wanted to put the brakes on and scream: ‘This is not happening.’

But it did happen and I had some difficult, rebellious teenage years. When I left high school my classmates voted me Most Likely To Be Arrested!

What I learned about those years is that I should have talked more about what I was feeling instead of behaving in a silent, resentful way.

Although I was born in America, I regarded London as home. But I then found myself living with my parents in the middle of Michigan.

What a culture shock.

Exactly the same thing happened, in reverse, with my own daughter Piper.

She was brought up in America and I brought her with me — aged 11 — when I moved back to London.

The biggest lesson I learned from being 18 is that I should have talked more about my feelings.

The result is that I now talk to Piper non-stop.

I have often wondered what the pay-back might be for my own adventurous teenage past.

Part of me thinks that the relationship between teenage girls and their mums is set in stone. The parent is always going to be the bad guy. There is a reason, in my opinion, why teenagers have to go through a tough time.

If they did not forcibly separate themselves by saying: ‘You are the enemy,’ there is no way kids would be able to leave home.

But I do think plenty of talking to each other — and talking through everything — is the way forward.

I have been given a chance to do things differently with my own daughter — and hope she comes away from it with positive memories.

She is curious about the fact that she has spent a good period of her life growing up on a film set.

That was just the way it had to be at the time."

October 14, 2011: "Well, I've never really been aware of anything in my life. I mean, when I was doing The X-Files, people used to say 'Oh... what a whirlwind life you've had - you got this job at 24, you got married, you got pregnant, you got divorced. But my response was always: isn't that just what people do? It never really hit me over the head in the way people were saying."

And then, without prompting: "I think that, - maybe the problem is, - I mean, I don't have any regrets whatsoever, because any regret would mean that I wish that I hadn't done the series or had Piper [her first child], but I guess if I were able to talk to my younger self, I might have wished for a little bit more consciousness. And I wish I had known that I had choice. Not choice in terms of whether or not I had the baby. I just think there were a few times in my life when I could have said no, or I could have stepped back. But I always just went whichever way the wind blew me."

She has been divorced twice, from an art director on The X-Files (the father of Piper, who is now 17) and the documentary maker Julian Ozanne. Might she marry Mark Griffiths, the businessman with whom she has sons of three and five? Or is she done with marriage? "Neither. I have no idea." She says she likes having children now, when she is not working 16 hours a day. [With Piper] I was shooting The X -Files and she was in my trailer while I was on set. And I also think that being a bit older makes a difference, just in terms of the kind of attention and appreciation for the child."

March 25, 2012: Q: You call London home now. What are your Sundays like?

GA: I try to keep my sons [ages 3 and 5, with her partner, businessman Mark Griffiths] in bed until 7 a.m., and then we’ll either have breakfast downstairs or go out. My daughter [17, from her marriage that ended in 1997] gets a reprieve, since sometimes that’s her only morning to sleep in. Then, depending on the weather, we’ll go to a park or an indoor jungle gym....

Q: Do you see yourself in your daughter?

GA: We are very, very similar—much to her chagrin. She’s constantly saying, “Mom, I’m doing this just like you!”

March 11, 2015: GA: And I've collected art for many years. One of the first, the first check that I got from The X-Files I spent buying-- not all of it, but part of it-- spent buying a piece of art. It's been a big part of my life. My daughter and I go to galleries; and [unintelligible, possible "I take"] my two little boys to galleries. And that's art in all its forms: from sculpture to video installation to fine art, to anything. Um. And music. Um. And dance. [Laughs.]

February 23(?), 2016: I’m very good at compartmentalizing; I learned that early in the first run when I had a kid who was in my trailer and I was on set [laughs]. And for all those years, it was going back and forth between filming scenes daily and then being “mommy,” switching on and off. But when you’re so far away, it can be really challenging. When real life is so much more important than anything that you’re doing in the world of make believe, it causes angst [laughs].

February 25, 2017: Gillian’s daughter Piper, now 22, is ‘quite grounded’, she says, but that’s partly due to luck. ‘There are times when I’ve gone waxing on about something or other and times when I’ve just let her be. She’s very self-aware, reflective and honest, so the good stuff must have had some impact, although I’m sure there’s plenty of negative stuff that’s been passed down as well....’

Gillian moved to New York and worked as a waitress between theatre roles until she was cast in The X-Files, aged 24. She thought it would run for 13 episodes. Instead, it dominated the next ten years of her life. She met her first husband, Piper’s father Clyde Klotz, on set (he was assistant art director).

Having therapy as a teenager helped Gillian cope with fame, but she still felt overwhelmed at times. ‘There were occasions during that series when I wasn’t sure whether I could go on. I started having panic attacks on a daily basis while we were shooting, around the time Piper was born. It was a mixture of not having dealt with childhood problems, the work being intensive, living in the spotlight and the expectation on me, as well as not knowing how to get balance or properly take care of myself. The panic attacks forced me to start practising meditation, just to eke out a tiny bit of space for myself, and that made it possible to continue. Gillian and Clyde divorced after three years (she later said she had been too young and has encouraged her daughter to travel and ‘make the most of her life’ before getting seriously involved with a man)....

There are 12 years between Piper and Oscar, so Gillian’s daughter was an only child for almost as long as she was. ‘I don’t think anything is accidental in life. It wasn’t on purpose but it’s ironic,’ she says.

Is there some advantage to having a spell as an only child? ‘I’m not so sure. It was really important to me that Oscar had [another] sibling because Piper felt like an only child, Oscar’s dad was an only child and I didn’t want to repeat that with Oscar. So his relationship with his brother is something new to me. I’ve never observed similar-age sibling relationships before and it’s really fascinating and beautiful.

February 3, 2018: Since last year Anderson has been in a relationship with Peter Morgan, the writer of The Crown. Previously she was married to Clyde Klotz, an X-Files assistant art director and the father of her daughter, Piper, now 23....

If she were to give any advice to her younger self, it would be to think carefully before saying yes – to anything. “It was always very difficult for me to look at the big picture of things: to step back and judge whether something was right – whether it’s work or a human being. There are a few things in my life – and no, I’m not going to get specific – where I wish I’d had enough self-belief and self-worth to sit back and say, ‘Actually, is this a good idea?’ ”

Her daughter, Piper, she says, is the opposite. “She really considers things; she pauses before she leaps. And certainly my leaping has had benefits. With theatre, I know that if I think about it too much, I will backpedal. If it’s something that I know is going to challenge me in a certain way, I will say yes and go for it – even though I’m absolutely terrified to my boots. So that is an example where it pays off. There are other examples where my leaping is less, er, productive.”

November 1, 2024: “My mom was actually really good at reading children’s books and has always been,” Anderson said. “You go to grandma to read books to the kids ... She properly does voices and completely gets into the story.”

And while many kids stop reading with their loved ones once they're able to parse the words themselves, that wasn't the case for Piper and her grandmother.

“My daughter asked her if she would continue to read to her in her, like, mid-20s,” Anderson added. “And so once a week, they go on FaceTime Audio and my mom reads to her … they’ve gone through so many, multiple editions of books.”

Piper, 30, who Anderson shares with former husband Clyde Klotz, worked in the art department for The X-Files revival in 2016 and 2018. Her mom played FBI Special Agent Dana Scully on the original TV series, which aired from 1993 to 2002.

Anderson shared with Bustle that it was Piper who pushed her to embrace reading more, as well.

November 12, 2024: David and Gillian discuss their distant relationship in the 90s.

GA: I've got such a bad memory. I'm trying to think of any, um-- I just remember.... I mean, our hours.

DD: Well, yeah. I mean, it would make you insane to try to do it, sleep-deprivation. You were pregnant as well in the first year, you had a baby the first year. I mean, I can't imagine that you could remain sane, okay, at whatever age you were.

GA: Mm.

DD: Twenty... twenty-four, and you get pregnant. You're on a show that blows up. Your dreams are coming true in a way, but it's also a nightmare now.

GA. Mm.

DD: Um.

GA: Getting a divorce.

DD: [Chuckles] You're, you're getting a divorce! Well, that'll happen when you have a baby.

GA: [Chuckles] I mean, yeah. I... I do remember times where I just balled my eyes out. Y'know--

DD: There would have to be!

[Both talk over each other.]

DD: But I don't know how you'd keep a straight thought in your head! And I do remember you coming into my trailer and telling me you were pregnant--

GA: I remember that, too! Yeah.

DD: You remember that.

GA: Yeah. I think it was the same day that, um, Blue had been spayed. I think.

DD: [Chuckles.]

December 4, 2025: “My daughter basically grew up in my trailer,” Anderson said of Piper’s childhood on The X-Files.

“She would play at the lot of the studio or wherever we were on location and interact with the various prosthetic limbs [on set]. … It was a crazy, crazy, crazy way to be a mom, but at the same time it really focused my attention on being a mom when she was in front of me, and it really got me to focus on compartmentalizing.”

BONUS

January 2000: In the early years, Gillian gave birth to a daughter, Piper, and then divorced her technician husband Clyde Klotz, while David Duchovny married Tea Leoni and the pair now have a daughter, Madelaine. Mitch has also married- he met his wife on the set when she played Gillian Anderson's body double- and now has an 18-month-old daughter, Sawyer.

"Sometimes our set looks like a crèche, "Mitch laughs. "Sawyer is still too young to understand about keeping quiet on the set. Gillian, however taught Piper to be quiet very early. She now says 'Shush' when the cameras start rolling!"

... [Mitch and Arlene] have a daughter, Sawyer, 18 months. Arlene, who has the same slight build as red-haired Anderson, is not a natural redhead.

Mitch Pileggi: "No, they have to colour all the redheads on the set the same red. Hang on, I'm gonna be in deep S!*@ for saying that! Gillian's daughter, Piper sometimes calls Arlene 'Mommy'!"

May 2002: As for his time in The X-Files universe, [Chris Owens] says that the most physically challenging part he played was that of the Great Mutato in Post Modern Prometheus. “The make-up for that took longer than the make-up for deformed Spender. Gillian said that out of all the characters her daughter had seen, that one was a little too realistic for her. It kind of freaked her out, but I ended up playing blocks with her in fully Mutato make-up. That was a little surreal.”

CONCLUSION

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