As the iconic and cool-as-fuck FBI Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files, Gillian Anderson redefined the female lead in a Bureau-issued blazer and steely glare. A character etched in TV lore, that role marked the beginning of a three-decade career swerving expectations and solidifying her cult status. One year she’s winning a Golden Globe for her unnerving turn as Margaret Thatcher in The Crown; the next, she’s a no-nonsense sex therapist in Sex Education. She’s portrayed Miss Havisham, Eleanor Roosevelt, Emily Maitlis, and Blanche DuBois – all with the same razor-sharp precision and captivating unpredictability.

Anderson’s upcoming roles maintain that brilliantly off-kilter energy. In Joachim Rønning’s Tron: Ares, she’s dropped into a future AI world where the lines between tech and human begin to glitch. Then she’s navigating blood and gore in Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Death and Sex at Camp Miasma, a genre trip that’s part horror, part coming-of-age fever dream. In both, the actor leans into the strange, the surreal and the unexpected. There are few who operate in the same sphere as Anderson, but Academy Award-winner Sandra Hüller holds a gravitas befitting such company, gradually building one of the most shapeshifting and emotionally-attuned filmographies in recent memory, with landmark performances in Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest. Two cinematic powerhouses; a conversation of the highest calibre.

Gillian Anderson: Hello, Sandra!

Sandra Hüller: Hi darling! I’m so happy that you are obviously on some sort of holiday, it feels right because I have this list here of the things you’ve done in the past year, and I’m like, “Does she have a twin sister?” [both laugh]
GA: It’s funny, it has been a bit like that. I was bought a birthday gift of coming to a de-stress retreat thing in Italy for a week. It’s one of those medical retreat places, but it’s not real. [laughs] It’s really good food, and they poke and prod you, but at least it’s made me slow down.

SH: The list of stuff you’ve been doing is really interesting to me because everything is so different from one another. Is this a goal to do as many different projects as possible – to expand as a human being – or did it just happen? I would love to know.
GA: I’m initially interested [in a project] if it feels like it’s touching on something I haven’t done before. Obviously, that feels like a good motivation for even taking a look. Then, of course, it comes down to the script and the director. I realise that I have made some choices that took risks in terms of first-time directors that have not led to anybody getting to see the projects. [laughs] I know that I’ve said, “Oh, I’ve never played a Russian woman be- fore,” and then it never sees the light of day because maybe it was too big of a risk and I wasn’t taking in all the considerations in terms of, “Have they actually directed anything good before?” [laughs] I’m more likely to be excited by something if it feels different to anything else, but I feel like a lot of actors are like that, everybody wants to expand.

SH: Some people like to do things they’re familiar with because they feel safe and they feel like they know what they’re doing, but I’m also a fan of the things we cannot do in the first place, and then trying to find out about it.
GA: But you said something interesting, which was ‘expanding myself as a human being’ and I’m not sure whether I ever think about that. I think for me, it’s mostly motivated by the actor side of my brain.

SH: Ah, it’s not the personal experience that you’re looking for?
GA: Not usually. Certainly, with a director that I’m excited by, it would be the experience of my human self working with somebody who works in a different way or is an interesting filmmaker. But mostly, it’s about expanding, exploring and chal- lenging myself in different ways as an actor.

SH: Is it something that drove you from early on?
GA: When you do a series for almost a de- cade, you have to fight quite hard to convince people that you can do something other than that. So, I’m sure proving to other people, and to myself, had something to do with it. Also, I think there is part of me that felt like… That was not a lost decade, but certainly I’m making up for lost time. [laughs]

SH: I totally understand. I told you that my daughter and I started watching The X-Files, you’re probably tired of talking about it, but I just wanted to tell you because it’s a generational inspiration, it goes on and on – it still works today. Also, what I find so interesting about it is that it’s ageing really well.
GA: Oh, is it? That’s interesting.

SH: It’s ageing so well because the whole style of clothing and filming is timeless. It’s really strange, it could’ve been done today but been put into another era. Also, I really don’t understand people sometimes because when you say to me right now that it’s hard to convince people you can do other things than Scully, this woman that you played, the potential and ability that was in her all the time, all of these things were there. When I watch it, I have the feeling that I’m only watching a tiny bit of the things that you are capable of, and that she’s capable of.
GA: Interesting. I do think that the people who were really paying attention, who were meaningful in that part of my life, I think they could see that. But it was a constant question. Then finally I was cast in The House of Mirth by Terence Davies, who I was a huge fan of and couldn’t believe that he was coming to ask me to do his film, and it turned out he’d actually never seen my work, he just saw a headshot [laughs] I was like, “Finally!” He just saw a headshot and thought my face was appropriate for that time period.

SH: I want to ask you about Tron, because I have to be honest, I’m just an Eastern German girl and I didn’t know what it was. Then I watched the trailer for the new film and I was blown away. I think it’s really special because there are a lot of franchises, but it looks different. I have a feeling that you are a person who loves freedom very much and has worked hard for it. In such a big set-up, is there any freedom as an actor? I’m really interested in that.
GA: I had some experience with green screen and blue screen in The X Files days, but it was very much the lo-fi version of it back then. We were so meshed with our characters already that anything that might have thrown us – having to pretend that we’re looking at this, that or the other – didn’t make that much of an impression. On Tron, my first day of work was walking into a sound stage that was pretty much bigger than anything I’d ever been in before in my entire career, and there was nothing in it. The walls were blue and yes, I’d seen digitalised pictures of what might be inside it, but we could’ve been floating in space. I realised the degree to which I hold on to where I am in time and space for security as an actor. At the beginning, it was just me and Evan [Peters] having quite an intense conversation standing side-by-side in the midst of this blank universe, I found it incredibly intimidating and not freeing at all. Because your voice doesn’t carry either, you’re having an intense conversation, but you really have to push it to feel like you’re being heard. On day one, I already felt like I was floating in the universe with no tethers, nothing to pull on that felt safe at all. [laughs] But, that’s exciting in and of itself. What I am used to as an actor, because I’ve been doing this for 100 years, is that regardless of whatever is going on, it’s about showing up prepared. No matter what the circumstances are, being able to take care of my- self and my own performance in that moment. I get thrown very easily, I’m very hypersensitive to noise and distractions. Those things are working in tandem at the same time as feeling like I have to trust myself, but also I’m freaking the fuck out. [laughs] Sometimes it helps the performance and sometimes it doesn’t, but no matter what, it always feels like a leap of some kind.

“It’s about showing up prepared. No matter what the circumstances are, being able to take care of myself and my own performance in that moment.”

SH: I find that so interesting because acting is something that has to do with connection, or at least that’s the way I feel about it. It’s nothing you can do on your own, you not only connect with your partners but also with your environment. All these things coordinate in this universe that you’re navigating through, so it seems really interesting to go through this path in your mind and to rely on other people much more than you usually do, because you don’t know what they will do with it.
GA: Looking at your roster of films, I would imagine that perhaps there’s more communication and protection than some of the things I’ve thrown myself into from time to time. For instance, when I did American Gods, it’s a TV series that was shot in Toronto and I only popped in here and there for days. I would show up to play David Bowie on a day and have it all together, we’d try out the hair and make-up on the same day, then it was like, “OK, go!” I had a few hours to do it, then I’d have to leave. Part of that is my own problem because I happened to be shooting two other things at the same time. [laughs] Having experiences like that, that literally feel like it’s a tightrope.

SH: But is it a problem? It feels like you en- joy it, maybe it’s just your way of working.
GA: When you said, “Are you two people? Do I have a twin?” It’s part of that problem, of taking too much on and not having enough time. It’s a bit of the chaos of my life. Anyway, back to Tron… [laughs]

SH: And then, there are so many other things that you have done. What is The Abandons?
GA: The Abandons is a Netflix series that was written initially by Kurt Sutter. It’s a Western that takes place in 1835, and we shot it in Calgary. It’s me and Lena Headey, I’m a silver baroness, my hus- band has passed and I have taken on the business that we had together. I’m there alone with money, trying to start a civilisation and move the narrative of human beings across America forward by amass- ing wealth and building towns. Lena is a farmer who has adopted five children from around the area who were orphaned and her ranch is on a plot of land that is incredibly inconvenient for my dreams, and she won’t relinquish it to my silver mines. So, I go to many lengths to move her on or to convince her that she needs to hand it over.

SH: So, it’s probably horses and weapons?
GA: Yes, horses, weapons, heat, snow, dust, rain. [both laugh] Have you ever acted on horses before?

SH: Yes.
GA: It’s something else entirely, things change second by second.

SH: Absolutely, it’s uncontrollable. German insurances are funny, so we have horse training and then we sit on machines that are carried by a truck.
GA: I’ve seen those contraptions. [laughs]

SH: So, it’s about two women basically who are in a fight. Did you have to have training for any- thing, or could you just do all these things?
GA: We did a cowboy camp beforehand for a week, which was fun. I previously, for some strange reason, knew how to ride a horse.

SH: Can anybody do [the cowboy camp]? Is it something you can book?
GA: Somebody who worked with me on Sex Education sent his two sons to a ranch in Montana to do the equivalent of a cowboy camp. If you’re interested, they do exist. [laughs]

SH: Oh yeah, I’m very interested.
GA: To learn how to lasso and all that. [laughs]

SH: You never know when you may need it. [both laugh] When you say you do so many things at the same time, what about prep? You said there were works where you just arrived and you had to do it, do you always trust that something good will come out of it? I think I heard you say that you’re always afraid that someone will throw you out on the first day, which I know very well.
GA: Yeah. [both laugh] I haven’t had many jobs where there has been prep. Just recently, I did a film that was also very different with Ben Affleck called Animals, he was directing and so much of the film was shot in one house. We were rehearsing all the scenes taking place in that house in a single week so that when we then came back to them on their designated filming days, everyone knew where they were going to stand or sit, and the camera crew knew where to put the cameras so they could do it before we even showed up to set that day. There are different versions of prep, I’ve always dreamed of the kind of prep I understand Joe Wright does, where he gathers all his actors for weeks beforehand and you disappear into that life.

SH: It’s like theatre.
GA: But at the same time, I’ve got three kids, and so very often that dictates what I can and can- not do in terms of how many weeks I’m away and all that. Whatever complexity in my schedule is all because of me and my restrictions. [laughs] Even if it is that I’m only working for a short period of time on something because they’re block shooting all of my stuff and it’s more challenging than spreading it out, it’s because a big priority for me is my children. The consequence of trying to have balance is that you are in these very intense periods of time, and I make my peace with it.

SH: I get it, it’s the same for me. That’s why I’m not so interested in extended prep, I can do it on my own.
GA: Precisely. I was also recently on a fantastic project where the director…

SH: Was it Teenage Death and Sex at Camp Miasma?
GA: Yes! It was so much fun.

SH: What is this?!
GA: It’s a horror film directed by Jane Schoenbrun. Very, very hot on the New York indie film scene and they have been working on this for so long and literally knew every beat of what they wanted it to look like and how they were going to shoot it. They would change lenses per scene, some- times an element would be fisheye… It was very – I don’t even want to say experimental – because they knew exactly what they were doing. But then there was a dinner scene where myself and Hannah [Einbinder] are sitting on opposite ends of the table, it was the first scene of the day and they had set up the camera already, so we got to set and they said, “OK, should we shoot?” And it’s like a five-page scene. There was part of my brain that was think- ing, “This is interesting, this is exciting, why not?” Then the other part of my brain was like, “Hang on a second, this is day two. I’m not entirely sure if I have her under my belt yet – and we’re eating during the scene. Maybe we just rehearse it once?” We did end up rehearsing it but I suddenly realised what that was about, it was because Jane had seen it in their eyes so specifically, of course that was what it was going to be when we did it. It’s fascinating, but both are exciting for different reasons.

SH: To live in the brain of a director is some- thing that I would fancy. I would love to know how this works, all the different strings that you have to have in your hand at the same time. You have to be a certain person to do that.
GA: I think you do, and I think there’s part of me that is that person, but I don’t know how one does it and parents at the same time. The small experience I had with it was all-consuming, every second was a question from somebody wanting an answer. I’ve always thought, in my 60s or my 70s would be when I would try and do it again. [laughs]

SH: I learned there is a story about this Camp Miasma, or [in the plot] there has been a film before, can you tell me a bit about it?
GA: [In the story] there are many sequels of [an imagined] film, and it starts with snatches of these sequels, a quick succession of posters and different cheesy scenes. The first one was incredibly popular and then each sequel after that was [not]. So, you have a young filmmaker played by Hannah who really wants to make the final sequel herself, but as it should’ve always been made. She wants to find the actress who was in the original film and have her also star in this final sequel, so she goes looking for her and she’s a recluse – played by me. She lives pretty much in the set of the original film.

SH: Oh my god! [laughs]
GA: A campground from the original film came up for sale, she decided to buy it and that is where she lives. She lives by herself and has for many, many years.

“I’m initially interested [in a project] if it feels like it’s touching on something I haven’t done before.”

SH: What makes it horror? What is it like to film? I avoid filming horror because I can’t watch it.
GA: I can’t watch horror either.

SH: Not because I don’t like it or I have dis- respect for the genre, I’m just too afraid.
GA: Me too, I can’t watch horror at all. This is a different kind of horror that has a lot of humour, it’s like extreme blood and guts, almost like Monty Python, where it’s so much that you laugh.

SH: What about press work? Because when it’s six projects and then you have to present them too.
GA: I don’t often think about that side of it when I say yes to something, it’s almost like I keep myself naive, so then when the reality hits, it’s like “Wait, what? Japan?” [both laugh] But also, some of them are really small, this one I just did [Trespasses] is Channel 4.

SH: It doesn’t look small, though?
GA: It’s very beautifully, beautifully shot.

SH: Yes. Do you want to tell me a little bit about it?
GA: It’s based on a novel called Trespasses by a woman called Louise Kennedy…

SH: Oh!
GA: Does that ring a bell?

SH: Yeah.
GA: It did really well, it’s basically a love story that takes place during The Troubles. I had read and loved this book. A friend of mine was publish- ing it and she offered it to a mutual friend of ours to produce it, so we held a dinner for Louise right be- fore she started her press tour and over dinner she said, “When this comes to be, will you play Gina, the mother?” So I promised her that I would, and then I did. It was a really wonderful experience. We shot in Belfast, Lola Petticrew plays my daughter and they are a fantastic young actor, incredibly talented. It was a small, low-budget production with a really amazing mix of Northern Irish local actors. The director [Dawn Shadforth] had a very strong vision of how she wanted to shoot it and I’ve worked on many productions where there’s been reflections, or you shoot through chandeliers, but she alters perspective in the film and it creates a mixture of discomfort, intimacy and tension that feels both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It’s a very interesting thing that she’s done. I think she’s really pulled it off, I’m excited.

SH: I saw just a snippet, but I love the way that you… The tension in there is really present and it has to do with the way you keep these things in- side of you. It’s just little comments that make everybody feel observed, and a bit controlled. [both laugh]
GA: Yes.

SH: She’s trying to be soft in a way, but it just doesn’t work. [laugh]
GA: She’s a piece of work.

SH: So, how long will you be there [at the retreat]?
GA: I’ve got some hydro-something-or-oth- er in a few minutes. I’m going to be poked and prodded a bit more. Love it.

SH: I’m so happy. Call me anytime.
GA: Maybe we will be in the same country at the same time at some point!

Interview originally published in Heroine 23. 

All clothing and accessories throughout by DIOR FW25, all jewellery, worn throughout, by DIOR JOAILLERIE.

hair SANDRA HAHNEL at CAREN AGENCY;
make-up AMANDA GROSSMAN at FORWARD ARTISTS;
set design CHLOE ROOD at ONE REPRESENTS;
photography assistants WILL BRUCE, BRUNO McGUFFIE;
fashion assistants BELLA MAGEE, SETH ROBERTSON;
set assistant LETTIE McLAREN