Gillian Anderson, icon of the small screen for thirty years

Scientist in

, sex therapist and eccentric mother in

, “Iron Lady” in The Crown… Since her debut as Agent Scully thirty years ago, Gillian Anderson has multiplied the roles of strong woman on the small screen.

Honored this week at the CanneSeries festival, the 53-year-old actress was awarded the "Variety Icon Award" for her entire rich career, started on the boards and passed through the cinema, but above all emblematic of the history of television.

“I have indeed embodied a lot of iconic women”, acknowledged Gillian Anderson on Friday in front of a conquered audience at the Palais des Festivals, after receiving her prize and walking the pink carpet.

The following day, the London-based American was cheered on by hundreds of admirers during a masterclass, in front of fans who grew up with FBI agent Dana Scully's "fantastic Saturdays" on M6.

"I didn't want to do TV"

When she started her mythical duet in 1993 in

with David Duchovny, the interpreter of Fox Mulder, Gillian Anderson was only 24 years old and dreamed rather… of cinema.

“I didn't want to do TV because the sector at the time, and in particular for women, did not make people dream.

Movie actors doing television were stigmatized, and I always wanted to do movies, ”she says.

X-Files

will give him the opportunity to appear in dark rooms, with two feature films from the series, in 1998 and 2008, but above all to invest homes for nearly ten years.

A success sometimes too heavy to bear for the young actress, who became a mother at 25, who cannot imagine the impact that her austere heroine will have on her career and television, where strong female roles are then developed as in

or

.

Touring in Canada, "X-Files" attracted "a lot of attention when I did not yet know who I was", explains Gillian Anderson, also referring to the "abandonment" of the first of her three children "17 hours a day ".

An exclusive contract with Netflix

When the series ended in 2002, the Chicago native went into exile in the United Kingdom, "determined to do something completely different" and happy to find people there who had thought, "from the start", that she could play "something other than Scully", especially in the theater.

She signed her most notable success in 2006 at the cinema with

, but it was still a series,

, which put her back in the spotlight in 2013.

She plays Stella Gibson, a London cop sent to Northern Ireland in search of a serial killer.

A "badass" woman as she likes them, feminist, independent with an assumed sexuality.

“When I read the script, I felt that it was necessary” that we know that “a woman like her can exist”.

She asserts herself off-camera, struggling to obtain the same salary as David Duchovny during the resurrection of the

series between 2016 and 2018.

In 2019, she created a surprise by trying her hand at comedy in

through Jean Milburn, mother of a teenager and "morally ambiguous" sexologist who, she hopes, will help lift "the taboo surrounding the sexuality of older women.

In a completely different register, she lent her features to Margaret Thatcher in

, a challenge that terrified her, at a time when "everyone gives their opinion every second".

It will surely continue to offer strong female roles, thanks to an exclusive contract with Netflix and its production company just announced.

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