beccaelizabeth :)

While at primary school in London, Gillian began to develop the mischevious streak that led her to run wild as a teenager, but perhaps equipped her well for her future role as FBI agent and forensic pathologist Dana Scully.

The 26 year old, 5ft 3in star was, by her own admission, something of a problem child. 'I was bullied at the first school I went to in north London and in the end that turned me into a bully.' she says. 'I went to Coleridge Junior School in Crouch End, north London, where I took a lot of stick- probably because I was American, even though I did speak with an English accent. But I was also very independant and very bossy, which didn't exactly help. I wasn't a particularly bright student- I was too much of adaydreamer. And I certainly wasn't science mad like Scully. I didn't pay a lot of attention; I talked a lot and got punished a lot.'

When Gillian was 13, the family moved back to America. 'I considered myself British when I lived in London and I had trouble adjusting when I went back to America. Again, no one could understand my accent and I got teased.'

Inspired by her time in London where punk was just beginning, Gillian decided to dye and cut her hair into a Mohican style- and pierce her nose for good measure. 'We'd walk down the street and give the finger to anyone who stared at us.' she says. 'i did it to express my anger, because I had a lot of it and I was never very good at dealing with my emotions. But acting has certainly given me a way to express myself.'

As the final strand of her education, Gillian attended the theatre school of DePaul University, Chicago. 'At first, I had no interest in acting but then I became keen and felt at home.' She went on to appear in a variety of off-Broadway shows, before attending an audition in 1993 for The X Files pilot episode with the show's creator; there, she landed the role that has catapulted her to fame and fortune.

She well remembers her first meeting with her co-star David Duchovny. 'We hit it off straight away,' she recalls. 'We almost fell into a rhythm while we were reading together and it felt really comfortable.'

As FBI agent Dana Scully, the strawberry blonde powerdresser who covertly investigates paranormal crime, she is the perfect foil for her partner, Fox Mulder. She is the sceptic, he the true believer who, when plausible explanations don't fit a crime, suggests solutions involving UFO visitations, government cover-ups and genetic mutations.

'The scripts are mysterious and the stories are wonderful.' says Gillian, who was nominated for a golden globe earlier this year. 'I think what makes it a hit is the fact that it allows people to escape to another world, another reality far removed from their own, for a little while.

'Although Scully is certainly a sceptic, I'm not. It makes sense to me that peopl ehave seen aliens - but when some of them start talking about being actually abducted by aliens, part of me shuts down.'

As well as sending her career into orbit, The X Files is also responsible for bringing her happiness off-screen. It was while working on the show that she met and fell in love with the programme's then production designer, Canadian Clyde Kotz. After knowing each other just three months, they married on New Year's Day 1994, on the 17th hole of a Hawaiian golf course. They now have a 22-month-old daughter, Piper.

Gillian worked through her pregnancy, using body doubles towards the late stages. She missed only one episode and was back on set only 10 days after her daughter's birth. 'I'm sure I did have post natal depression,' she says, 'but there was just no time for it. I'm a much happier person since Piper came along. Nothing else seems quite so important any more. After I had Piper, I became more positive, more open, more caring. I think I've become a nicer person.'

At the moment, Gillian and the family are based in Vancouver, where the series is filmed, but their intention is to move to the States after the fifth season is completed. No doubt by then she will be financially secure for life. 'In terms of steady work, it's brilliant,' she says. 'But sometimes you can't help but feel that wonderful parts are passing you by. I guess there's no point in wasting energy thinking about not having been able to do Sense and Sensibility or whatever.'

So what next for the enigmatic agent? 'Making The X Files has been both the most joyous and the hardest time in my life, but I think what I'd really love to do next is go back to doing theatre - who knows, maybe even Shakespeare.'

Hailed as the sexiest man on TV, David Duchovny, who plays The X Files' supersleuth FBI agent Fox 'Spooky' Mulder , would never have become an actor if his mother had her way. 'She didn't want me to be an actor at all,' says the 35 year old star. 'She always hoped I'd become a distinguished university professor'.

His 55 year old mother Margaret, who was born in Aberdeen and now works as a schoolteacher in New York City, brought up David, his older brother Danny and his younger sister Laurie alone, after her divorce from American public relations man Amram Duchovny in 1972. David was 11 when his parents split up and his mum became his 'great driving force, urging me on to be the best I possible could,' says David. 'Coming from Scotland, where the value of education is held very highly, she instilled a thirst for learning in me. She pushed me very hard.'

Thanks to his mother's encouragement, he won a scholarship to New York's elite Collegiate School at the age of 13. He then sailed through his degree course at Princeton and went on to do an MA at Yale. It was while studying for his doctorate at Yale that the acting bug first bit - so much so that he decided to drop out of college. 'My mum was really disappointed. I think she always will be - even though I've actually been able to pull it off as an actor,' says David. 'I was never fully convinced that I was meant to be an academic. Mum still loves me, despite the fact that I didn't turn out quite the way she planned.'

Swigging beer in a lager advert could hardly have been further from her plans for her son. He even appeared in a number of X rated films, including The Rapture, a movie he made with Tom Cruise's ex-wife, Mimi Rogers. But legitimate roles soon came along, with parts in films such as Kalifornia with Brad Pitt, plus Chaplin and Beethoven. He also played a transvestite detective in Twin Peaks before securing his big break in The X Files. The show has not only shot him to international fame but has turned him into a pin-up. He has been labelled the 'sci-fi sex symbol', and is beseiged by adoring fans wherever he goes.

And while he may play the shy, mild mannered Fox Mulder on screen, in real life David admits he has a fatal weakness for the opposite sex. His three-year affair with Los Angeles-based actress Perrey Reeves ended recently. 'It's over, I'm sorry to say. The long-distance problem of our relationship - with me filming in Vancouver and Perrey in LA - was a big factor,' he says. 'I take responsibility for what happened. I could have tried harder to make it work, but it's very tough to keep things going when you're apart so much of the time. I guess you could call our relationship a casualty of The X Files.

He is now dating actress Dana Wheeler Nicholson, whose engagement to rock legend Eric Clapton ended last year. The couple met when Dana made a guest appearance on The X Files.

Outside work, David is a man with many interests. He takes care of his health, is a strict vegetarian, jogs and swims a mile every day. He also writes poetry and practices yoga. He and Gillian Anderson don't socialise much off-set but they get on well. 'It's like an arranged marriage,' he says. 'It can be a strain, but when you work with someone for any length of time there are bound to be strains.'

Both stars are tied to completing five series of The X Files, which will take until 1998. It's quite a commitment, and David makes no apologies for wanting to move on to other things. 'I want to make more movies.' he says. 'I don't want to be known as Mulder for the rest of my life.'

The star, who earns around £70,000 a week, has persuaded the cult show's producers to cut downt he schedule from 25 episodes to 22 episodes a season to accomodate his dreams of movie stardom. David has just spent the two month hiatus between filming The X Files making the film Playing God, in which he plays a disgraced drug-addict doctor who goes to work for the Mafia.

'When the world blows up, I don't thine that anyone is going to care about three missing episodes in The X Files. Working on the show is very gruelling. You work 12-14 hours a day, 10 months a year, playing the same character. The demands on an actor become more about stamina and endurance than about creativity and discovery. I'd much rather be creating new characters and moving from new project to new project.'

While some may regard him as ungrateful for wanting out of the show that made hima star, David insists that, for him, The X Files was intended as a stepping stone to greater things. Nobody was more surprised than he when the series became a winner. It now has 30 million weekly viewers in the US alone.

'I didn't want to do a TV show - I always wanted to make movies,' he says. 'But I agreed to do The X Files because it had a movie feel about it and I felt I could get some good experience and exposure for the few weeks I thought it would last. I never dreamed it would be such a huge hit. I really thought it would go six, maybe 12 episodes at the most.'

However, that is not to say that the star is completely ungrateful. 'I consider myself to be very lucky. For any actor, the odds of being on a hit show are remote, but what are the odds of being on a hit show that is any good?'

David is the first to admit he's never beena ble to understand the show's growing popularity. 'It could be down to the great writing. Maybe it's simply people's obsession with the unknown. It is obviously tapping into something people want. I think it's to do with religious stirrings and the search for some kind of extrasensory good. Couple that with a cynical sense of having been lied to by the government and you've got a pretty powerful combination.

'Whatever it is, I'm truly amazed at our success. After all, when it comes down to it, it's just a TV show.'

Maybe, but The X Files has catapulted David into the big time. It's planted him well and truly on the Hollywood map - and made him not a small fortune into the bargain...