Emotional … Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs as Raynor and Moth Winn.

Film

The Salt Path review – Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs hike from ruin to renewal

Marianne Elliott directs this affecting drama, based on Raynor Winn’s memoir, which builds steadily as the couple journey towards redemption

Cath Clarke

Wed 28 May 2025 11.00 BST

This film gives cinema one of the most nail-biting scenes of the year so far: an edge-of-the-seat moment as Gillian Anderson puts her bank card into a cash machine. Is there enough money in the account? Everything is at stake. This impressive, intelligent drama is an adaptation of Raynor Winn’s memoir about walking the South West Coast Path from Somerset to Dorset, with her husband, Moth. Unlike other hikers, the couple were not walking for pleasure – at least not to begin with. They had nowhere else to go after losing their farm. From theatre director Marianne Elliott, it stars two fancy actors – Anderson and Jason Isaacs – both giving lovely, emotional, low-key performances.

Walk on the wild side / Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs on their epic hiking movie The Salt Path

 

Interview

Walk on the wild side: Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs on their epic hiking movie The Salt Path

Ryan Gilbey

Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir about her and her husband’s 630-mile trek around England’s south coast has become a film. Its stars, makers and Winn talk floods, fog and forgiveness

Ryan  Gilbey

Friday 30 May 2025

‘Ihave played a lot of powerful, well-dressed women in my career,” says Gillian Anderson. They flash before your eyes: Margaret Thatcher (The Crown), Eleanor Roosevelt (The First Lady), Emily Maitlis (the Prince Andrew/Newsnight drama Scoop) – as well as the formidable sex therapist in the Netflix hit Sex Education, a role that led to her being inundated with dildos from over-enthusiastic fans. “These are all women in control of themselves and their environment. Any time I have an opportunity to steer against that, particularly lately, it’s of interest to me.”

Want: Sexual Fantasies, edited by Gillian Anderson review – intriguing survey of desire

 

Want: Sexual Fantasies, edited by Gillian Anderson review – intriguing survey of desire

Inspired by research for her role in Sex Education, the actor has collected a rich picture of modern women’s sexuality through clandestine contributions

Stephanie Merritt

Sun 8 Sep 2024 16.30 BST

Nancy Friday’s groundbreaking anthology My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies was first published in the US in 1973, though Gillian Andersononly read it for the first time when she took on the role of sex therapist Dr Jean Milburn in Sex Education. “Their unfiltered and painful honesty shook me,” she says of Friday’s letters and interviews in the introduction to Want, a new collection billed as the 21st-century update. Considering the issues raised by Friday’s book – what women want, and how that relates to the gender roles imposed on us – led Anderson to question how much might have changed in the intervening half-century, and to issue an appeal for answers.

 

Gillian Anderson wears dress by celine.com; sandals, jimmychoo.com; bangle and ring, both ananya.com. Photograph: Simon Emmett/The Observer

Interview

‘I get into trouble’: Gillian Anderson on being brave, her resting face and much anticipated book of sexual fantasies

Eva Wiseman

Her uncanny portrayals of famous women have brought her legions of fans. Now, as she prepares to play Emily Maitlis in the pivotal Prince Andrew interview, the actor talks to Eva Wiseman about acting, soft drinks and ‘side hustles’

Eva Wiseman

Sunday 24 March 2024

“Ihave a tendency to be cast as those types of women who have unbelievable brains,” says Gillian Anderson, running her hands through her glamour of blonde hair, “because my resting face is intellectual, as if I’m thinking about Proust or the world order. When in fact it’s usually, actually, dinner.” The next unbelievably brained woman Anderson will play is British journalist Emily Maitlis, in Scoop, a film about the process of securing her 2019 Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. This was the interview in which he discussed his friendship with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, his inability to sweat, and the Woking branch of Pizza Express, and, in 50 fast minutes, managed to do more damage to the royal family than five seasons of The Crown.

Gilliam Anderson / There were times when life was really bad

Gillian Anderson

Interview

Gillian Anderson: ‘There were times when life was really bad’

The actor formerly known as Dana Scully is now a self-help guru. How did she beat self-doubt and her ‘intolerant’ inner voice?

Decca Aitkenhead
Saturday 11 March 2017

The history of India’s independence and the creation of Pakistan had been unfamiliar to Gillian Anderson when she took the role of Lady Mountbatten for her new film Viceroy’s House. The actor had once hired a private history tutor, a dozen years ago, to fill in some gaps of history she was hazy on – “Stuff that just wasn’t in my brain” – but this had not been one of them.

Gillian Anderson Is Chasing the Bad Guys Once Again

Gillian Anderson

Q&A: Gillian Anderson Is Chasing 

the Bad Guys Once Again

By Matt Goulet

May 23, 2013

It's been 20 years since Gillian Anderson first picked up the FBI badge and flashlight as Special Agent Dana Scully on The X-Files. Since the series ended, we were more likely to find her on PBS or the BBC than on any major network. That, thankfully, is about to change as she returns to NBC. First in a guest arc on Hannibal (Thursday nights) and later this fall when her pilot Crisis airs. To sate us in the meantime, she's getting back into Scully mode, tracking down a serial killer on the British miniseries The Fall, which will be coming to Netflix May 28. Consider this your much-belated Gillian Anderson update.

Gillian Anderson / The X-Files

Gillian Anderson

Gillian Anderson: 'The X-Files fame was almost too much to take in'

The former X-Files star talks to Emine Saner about her new film Sister, whether she believes in extraterrestrials – and if she'll ever get together with Mulder

• 
  

• Emine Saner
• The Guardian, Thursday 25 October 2012 19.00 BST

Gillian Anderson in the film Sister.

In your new film, Sister, you're known as "the English Lady". How English do you feel?

1. Sister
2. Production year: 2012
3. Country: Rest of the world
4. Cert (UK): 15
5. Runtime: 92 mins
6. Directors: Brenda Davis, Ursula Meier
7. Cast: Gillian Anderson, Kacey Mottet Klein, Lea Seydoux, Martin Compston

Gillian Anderson as Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Young Vic in 2014. 
Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Gillian Anderson's Streetcar among next National Theatre at Home streams

Four new titles announced by the NT also include Barber Shop Chronicles, This House and Coriolanus starring Tom Hiddleston

Chris Wiegand

Thu 7 May 2020

The National Theatre has announced the next titles in its popular series of weekly streams on its YouTube channel during theatre’s shutdown. The four dramas will transport viewers to Shakespeare’s Rome, Tennessee Williams’ New Orleans, the hung British parliament of 1974 and barbershops from London to Harare.