Gillian Anderson: ‘I might take a break and play some psychopaths’

Gillian Anderson wants her next role to be a psychopath.

The 53-year-old actress says she wants to diversify after playing mainly trailblazing and independent women, including Dana Scully in ‘The X Files’, Margaret Thatcher in ‘The Crown’ and Jean Milburn in ‘Sex Education’.

She told the Daily Mirror: “Women interest me. I enjoy it (playing real life women.) But the pressure and expectation is greater.

“I might take a break for a while and play some psychopaths.”

It comes after Gillian was touted for a role as a villain in ‘Doctor Who’ by the new Time Lord Ncuti Gatwa, who starred alongside Gillian in ‘Sex Education’ as Eric Effiong.

Gillian added her success is down to taking risks, saying: “I don’t think I’ve ever stayed in my lane, figuratively and literally.

“I remember being in a therapy session with my mum, working through some stuff.:

She added her mother told a therapist: “No one is ever telling Gillian what she could and couldn’t do. She’s going to do what she wants’.

“That was true then and now.”

Mum-of-three Gillian added: “If I’d listened to other people I wouldn’t have ended up in the UK, wouldn’t have ended up doing theatre, ‘The X-Files’… sometimes you can succeed if you don’t toe the party line.”

She recalled in podcast ‘The Envelope’: “It felt like something changed in 2016.

“In that year I was getting to play Blanche in ‘Streetcar’ and in ‘The Fall’.

“I remember thinking, ‘If I die this year, I’ll be happy’. I get to play these amazing extraordinary women for different reasons.

“One an absolute hot mess and the other supposedly under control. They were a real force for feminism.”