Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2003, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My costaway this week is an actress. Her childhood was a checkerboard affair the early years as the only child of an American couple in London,

the rest as an elder sister in small town America.

Acting was her lifeline and in her 20s she moved to Hollywood in pursuit of the dream which had seduced and deserted many before.

For her, it came true. She landed the part of Agent Scully in the X-files, the glamorous epitome of rationalism in the face of the inexplicable.

Now the series that made her name and her fortune behind her, she's ready to prove her talents as an actress of range and versatility.

She received great praise for her performance as the doomed society beauty in the film

House of Mirth and is

the West End in an intense two-hander what the night is for.

She's had good reviews, the play less so, but then as she says,

I've had a tendency all my life to climb the highest mountain first. She is Jillian Anderson.

You've also had a lot of luck to Jillian. I'm thinking of your landing the part of

the X-far's huge stroke of luck because your casting was entirely an act of

faith on the part of its creator Chris Carter wasn't it? That's correct. At the

time it was he was going against form and really stuck his neck out for me based on his determination to have the character portrayed in the way that he saw her and not in the way that

Hollywood wanted her to be. But he saw her, Agent Scullied India, this smart, slick-suited

sensible shoe, nice,

she was nice glossy bob hair. That wasn't what you looked like at all when you went

for the audition, was it? No, it wasn't actually, and the very first time that I

showed up at the audition I showed up in

jeans and long scraggly almost dreadlocked hair and after the audition said

...