Gillian Anderson has long been open about her attraction to women, but the actor now appears ready to put a more specific name to her sexuality.
During a recent interview with The Australian, journalist Nikki Gemmell reported that Anderson identifies as pansexual.
The moment marks a shift for the X-Files and Sex Education star, who has previously discussed her relationships with women while remaining uncertain about which label best described her.
Anderson Previously Questioned Whether She Was Pansexual
In a 2024 interview with The New Yorker, Anderson reflected on her sexuality and openly wondered whether bisexual or pansexual felt like the right identity for her.
“Now, at the age of fifty-five, I am thinking, Oh, am I pansexual? Am I bisexual?” she said at the time.
Anderson has also spoken about having a relationship with a woman during her teenage years, an experience she said was once difficult to discuss publicly because she worried people would dismiss it as an attempt to attract attention.
“It felt secretive and illicit and wrong,” Anderson recalled, explaining that the pair believed they had to hide their relationship. But she couldn’t keep it a secret from everyone, and she later had a boyfriend break up with her.
She also offered some playful insight into what catches her eye, naming forearms and hands among her favorite features on men and lips, buttocks and clavicles on women.
Exploring Women’s Desire in ‘More’
The conversation came as Anderson discussed More, her second collection of anonymous sexual fantasies submitted by women around the world.
The project follows her 2024 book Want, which was inspired by Nancy Friday’s groundbreaking 1973 collection My Secret Garden. Through both books, Anderson has sought to create space for women to express desires they may otherwise feel pressured to hide.
“There’s so much shame in cultures, religion and communities that it becomes very difficult for women to ask for what they want,” Anderson previously told Vogue India, adding that much of More is focused on challenging that shame.
Anderson also suggested that the release of More and her role in Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma could mark the end of her current creative exploration of sexuality.
“Once this book is done and once Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is done, I feel like … it might be the end of this chapter of my life,” she said.
Teenage Sex and Death
Her latest project has her starring alongside Hannah Einbinder in Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a horror film overflowing with blood, desire and gloriously messy queer characters.
Einbinder plays Kris, a filmmaker tapped to revive the cult classic Camp Miasma franchise. Hoping to reconnect with the original movie, she tracks down Billy Preston (Anderson), the mysterious former scream queen who started it all. What begins as research soon becomes much more intimate, pulling both women into a surreal world where obsession, pleasure, and horror are impossible to separate.
