How did she get into acting? How did she get the role of Dana Scully?
After initially wanting to be a marine biologist, at about age seventeen, she was in “a couple of auditions” in the Grand Rapids Community Theater, where she was “cast in a couple of things,” and from then it was as if she “had never thought about marine biology.” While studying for her Bachelor of Fine Arts at DePaul University, Gillian spent some time in the National Theater of Great Britain. After receiving her degree, she moved to New York and embarked on a serious career in theater–including an off-Broadway production of Alan Ayckbourne’s “Absent Friends,” for which she won a 1991 Theater World Award. She also performed in “The Philanthropist” at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven. Gillian then moved to Los Angeles and spent a year auditioning for various things, during which time she appeared in the cable movie The Turning and did the audiocassette version of Ann Rice’s Exit to Eden. Although she had once vowed she would “never do TV,”and seemed set on a career in film or theat
