Excerpts:
...Anderson was, in fact, a poster child for tortured adolescence. As a teen, she pierced her nose, shaved her hair into a Mohawk, and joined a band of kindred, combat-booted dispirits. "We'd walk down the street and give the finger to [whoever stared at] us" she recalls. "We'd go hear bands and smash against each other and jump off the stage. It was cool to get hurt. I needed to express my anger, because I had a lot of it - and I still do. I was never very good at expressing emotions...," adds Anderson. "I did everything I could not to feel pain." The dime store psychoanalysis stops here, suffice it to say that, in Anderson's opinion, acting saved her. "It gave me an outlet to express myself," she says of her first play, at a Grand Rapids community theatre. "It was so freeing" She went on to graduate from DePaul University's theatre school...

Excerpts:
"If Anderson seems more down to earth, she also has her "whimsical, mischievous side," says her costar. A decade ago she was a genuine punker, hanging out with rock musicians, her hair dyed and nose pierced. (As she has put it, "I was confused.")."

Excerpts:
Though she's known to "X-Files" fans as the strait-laced Scully and as a mother and wife, Anderson sees herself as a nonconformist. Born in Chicago but also raised in London and Grand Rapids, Mich., she spent her teen years as a rebel who found solace and identity in punk fashion and bands like Dead Kennedys and the Circle Jerks.
"I was angry and it was my way of keeping people at a distance," she remembers.
Anderson still describes herself as an outsider who has limited patience for the pretense and superficiality that she finds in some aspects of the entertainment industry.

Excerpts:
Q: "How did it feel to have been a punk?"
GA: "Uuhhhhhh. You know that was something that I needed to go throughout at the time. [Someone in the crowd yells, "How long?"] How long was I that way? I guess it started when I was 15 and went on until I was 21. Uh, I needed -- well it is still a part of me -- I mean, you know, what it was at the time was an expression of -- an attempt at expressing feelings and, um, you know, it was a very angry phase that I went through and it served me at the time. It was something that I needed to go through, uh, and it gave me a sense of self -- of who I was, and I started to make opinions about how I wanted to dress and what I believed in and what kind of music I wanted to listen to, and I think on the whole it made me a more independent and a stronger person. Even though it was a crutch, so to speak, at times. I'm talking about Mohawks, combat boots, swearing at people on the street. [Some cheers from audience.] Why is that so appealing to you? Um, now I can't do that anymore -- anyway, it is always something that is inside me, and once in a while I'll put on a Circle Jerks album or something. [Someone yells, "What is your favorite band?"] Right now? ["Then."] Then? Lords of the New Church."

Rolling Stone (Australia) Special Issue 17, 1995
Interview with Gillian Anderson by Andrew Denton, from Rolling Stone (Australian Edition)

AD = Andrew Denton
GA = Gillian Anderson

Excerpts:
AD: I've read that you used to be rather wild in your youth, with purple hair and a pierced nose or something like that. I would've thought you'd go for the potential party life that fame offers you.
GA: I'm actually a very private person, very quiet.