Gillian Anderson has named her favourite books by female authors.
Anderson is best known for appearing on our screens in some pretty iconic roles, including Jean Milburn in the hit Netflix series Sex Education and FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files . Another string to her bow is shining a light on women’s rights through her work in activisim.
The actor’s role in The Files particularly struck a chord with women and inspired many to pursue careers in medicine and science.
She told Stylist that she decided to play the role as “for the first time in a long time, the script involved a strong, independent, intelligent woman as a lead character”.
Anderson has taken part in charity work, and advocated for positive representations of women and the LGBTQ+ community.
In Sex Education, Anderson plays a charcater that is largely involved in removing stigmas and taboos around female sexuality and this is reflected in her real life, too.
Last year, she released a book about female sexual fantasies, Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous, it’s a collection of fantasies submitted anonymously by women around the world.
Speaking on the The Women’s Prize podcast, Anderson discussed some of her own favourite books.
The first on her list was Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, which was penned by female writers in 1973 and it is too, comprised of different fantasies that challenge preconceived notions of female sexuality.
She descibed the book as “quite shocking” although “not necessarily in the way that you’d expect. The level of intimacy and honesty from the women who were interviewed is just completely extraordinary”.
The actor also highlighted Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women, which is a non-fiction book that explores the complexieties of female desire through the lives of three different women.
She recalled it as “unlike anything I’d ever read before. It’s narrative journalism. It had that kind of curious, incisive journalistic perspective”.
Anderson added: “So it’s about these three women, but it’s really about who we are, as women. It asked big, profound questions about sexual power, politics, desire. It covers quite a lot when you dig down into it.”
Next Anderson opted for Kiley Reid’s Such A Fun Agee. It tells the story of a black woman wrongly accused of kidnapping a white child.
She explained: “I remember tearing through this book. Just desperate to know what was gonna happen and how any of these impossibly awkward situations are going to be resolved.”
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, which combines humour with a poignant exploration of mental illness, was another favourite of Anderson’s.
“It’s one of those rare books that kind of makes you cackle with laughter one moment and then rips you off the next moment and utterly destroys and devastates you. I think that’s what you want when you go to fiction. At least that’s what I want,” Anderson added.
Finally, Anderson selected The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, which details the author’s journey across the South West Coast with her husband after he is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Anderson explains that “it takes them through the journey of letting go of the resentment of being forced to give up their life that they had built everything, that they had an attachment to that we as human beings are attached to.”
Anderson is starring in a film adaptation of The Salt Path that comes out in UK cinemas this Friday.