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Star-Ledger
Movies: It's hard not to believe Gillian Anderson
01/19/01
BY BOB CAMPBELL
STAR-LEDGER STAFF

Gillian Anderson gives off a definite electricity, though not the usual klieg-light celebrity crackle. It's more like the ominous hum of an electrified fence. Which, of course, only makes trespassing more tempting.

Her high-tension poise has carried the 32-year-old actress into an eighth season as FBI Agent Scully in TV's "The X Files." It finds a loftier but no less mesmerizing outlet in Terence Davies' widely acclaimed "The House of Mirth," now entering national release.

Residual voltage flickers through Anderson's surprisingly compact (5-foot-3) frame as she sips mid-morning orange juice in a New York hotel restaurant. Undercover in subdued gray suit and elongated oval eyeglasses, her auburn hair folded in on itself, Anderson's guarded voice hesitates at its trademark throaty catch.

Disclosure doesn't come easily. Anderson seems to be declassifying her opinions, one by one, as she expresses them. Or perhaps there's a simpler explanation for her reserve. One clearly expressed Anderson opinion is: "I just want to go back to bed."

An earlier round of TV interviews had produced "my worst nightmare. I completely blacked out. I had no idea what I was saying."

A brief, ironic half-grin suggests that a much more spontaneous Anderson might become visible on closer acquaintance. One personal touch, a few fingers down from her Balinese thumb ring, is a piece of string looped below her knuckle.

"It's a ring my daughter made for me," Anderson explains, almost sheepishly. Six-year-old Piper was born during Anderson's brief marriage to art director Clyde Klotz.

The actress greets the surprise success of "The House of Mirth" with measured diffidence.

"It was two summers ago when we shot this," she offhandedly explains. "You kind of put something to sleep in your head afterwards. It's a period film. It's serious. You don't know if anyone is even going to care that it exists."

With equal cool, she chooses not to see her award-winning performance as Edith Wharton's Lily Bart in terms of a transformative career shift.

Others may have viewed Anderson as an upstart TV performer, but training at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, her home town, and England's National Theatre has left her quietly assured of her abilities.

Nor does she make any apologies for her signature role as Agent Scully.

"I have no issue with Scully," she says. "It's the other stuff that's hard to watch -- the parts without any substance. It's hard to see oneself exposing oneself for nothing."

Anderson's wary intensity pays unexpected dividends as Lily, the weak-winged social butterfly in "The House of Mirth." The heroine is a lovely and sociable young woman in 1906 Manhattan. Lacking in family connections and independent income, she's pampered by society friends who see her as a suitable mate for one of the era's rising tycoons.

Lily's poignant, fatal illusion is that she naturally belongs to this privileged class. Claiming the same freedom and entitlement as her wealthy friends (Laura Linney, Elizabeth McGovern), she spurns a moneyless soul mate (Eric Stoltz) and several rich but unattractive admirers with equal airiness.

"She's very good at the game," Anderson explains matter-of-factly. "She can't help herself. She has finer tastes than she can afford. Somewhere in her mind she imagines that she'll fall in love with some fabulous man who's also fabulously wealthy."

When Lily is unfairly stained by scandal, the earth opens up beneath her. Davies' film relentlessly tracks her desperate attempts to cling to honor and dignity as an unforgiving social machinery begins to chew her up.

In the early scenes, Anderson's maturity and force seem imperfectly fitted to her heedless young character. But she makes an increasingly potent impression as Lily's bitter education proceeds. The role engages the actress' own well-known feminist convictions in complex ways.

More than director Davies or co-star Linney, who viewed Lily's tale as timeless, Anderson focused on the female situation in Wharton's day and the "terrible consequences" awaiting the slightest misstep. But her Lily is more than a victim.

"I remembered the book as poor Lily Bart, the one who was wronged," she admits. Preparing for the film, she came to a more sophisticated view of Wharton's doomed darling.

"She was a participant in her own ruin," Anderson now sees. "She was part of the social nastiness that brought her down."

Crucially, Lily obtains certain letters that would redeem her reputation and expose the false friend who slandered her. But will she use them?

A tremor of emotion ripples through Anderson's description of Lily's "human dilemma. She's tired of all the falseness, but she can't quite bring herself to do one thing or the other. She can't humble herself. She can't take action. She's afraid, afraid, afraid."

Stepping back to a more detached perspective, she notes: "It's a challenge showing all this, because it takes place mostly in Lily's head. The blessing is that Edith Wharton lays out the story so clearly that her actions and choices tell you everything you need to know."

Anderson wryly grants that Lily's extraordinary dramatic arc is a departure from the fixed position of her "X-Files" heroine. Through some 150 episodes, Scully had to be re-introduced to the idea of trans-natural phenomena all over again every week.

The newly reduced presence of co-star David Duchovny and his true believer Agent Mulder has freed up actress and character.

"It has shifted a bit," she concedes. "For seven years, Scully was a nonbeliever and, oops, all of a sudden in the eighth season she's the one who's saying, look what's there. But it means that she's more pro-active now. She's the one who can make things happen."

That husky, even voice can't quite conceal her satisfaction. "It's a great relief," she says.

THE END

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