What Gillian Anderson Has Revealed About Her Sexuality

Publish date: 2024-05-04

While she is best known for her relationships with men, Gillian Anderson has been in same-sex relationships since her teens. "I was in a relationship with a girl for a long time when I was in high school," she told Out Magazine in 2012, referring to her time in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That relationship, paired with the way she dressed and the fact she grew up in London, made Anderson an easy target for bullies. For Anderson, dating a girl felt normal, so she felt no need to define her sexuality based on it. "If I had thought I was 100% gay, would it have been a different experience for me?" she pondered.

Her high school girlfriend wasn't the only woman she dated. Though she doesn't often elaborate, Anderson told The Times in 2018 she dated a woman suffering from terminal brain cancer. Still, they were the minority in her list of partners. That's why she never made a big deal about that part of her sexuality. "It's possible that my attitude around it came, on some level, from knowing that I still liked boys," she told Out.

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, Anderson's revelations caused an uproar on social media, particularly among religious circles. That was the only time in her career she considered responding to haters. "I was so close — and I mean minutes away — from tweeting back, but somebody had the presence of mind stopped me," she told The Telegraph in 2015.

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