Latest news with #GillianAnderson
The Sun
14 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
It's part of what actors do but it's never a joy, says Gillian Anderson as she reveals all about filming sex scenes
A TWO-MAN tent on the windy south-west coast of England might not be everyone's ideal spot for a steamy encounter. But that is where former X-Files actress Gillian Anderson found herself acting out a sex scene for her new film The Salt Path, about a homeless couple embarking on a 630-mile trek. 8 8 She was even asked to squeeze into a sleeping bag with co-star Jason Isaacs — and now she has spoken about the awkwardness of filming intimate acts with someone you barely know. Mum-of-three Gillian, 56, said: 'That is something you just expect as an actor. "That's part of what one does. I had an experience for many, many years working with the same actor every day. 'I've also done sex scenes on the first day of working, which is never a joy at any time during filming. "So you're thrown stuff all the time and just show whatever you're given. 'And Jason makes it very easy. He's very amenable, he's very likeable. 'And certainly physically, we feel like we're the same language — certainly by the end. 'We feel like our journey is baked into us, and we feel like we're part of the same conversation.' So is sex in a tent ever a good idea? Gillian said: 'Well, sex in the back of a car, sex anywhere, I mean, yeah, why not? 'Uncomfortable, tight quarters, but needs must . . .' The star became an international sex symbol playing FBI special agent Dana Scully in The X-Files, alongside David Duchovny as special agent Fox Mulder, in the original hit series that ran from 1993 to 2002. Secret desires Since then she has enjoyed a distinguished three-decade career that has seen her take on a variety of roles, from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Crown to therapist Jean Milburn in Netflix's racy series Sex Education. She has also found time to become a real-life crusader for female sexual empowerment and is currently working on a follow-up to her hugely successful 2024 book, Want. The collection of anonymous female sexual fantasies included one from a woman who wanted to be intimate with an office doorknob. I read the book and I couldn't speak for days. I was really profoundly affected by it. I think I might have threatened them within an inch of their lives to hire me! Gillian even hid one of her own fantasies in the mix — although she has not revealed which one — and has hinted that she may put more of her own secret desires in book two. The Salt Path is based on the book of the same name by long-distance walker and writer Raynor Winn. It tells her real-life tale of walking from Minehead in Somerset to Poole, Dorset, with her husband Moth after he is diagnosed with an incurable neuro-degenerative disease called corticobasal degeneration, or CBD. The couple had also become homeless in 2013, so they decided to set out on the 630-mile South West Coast Path with nothing but a tent bought on eBay, £115 in cash and a paycard to withdraw £48 a week in tax credits. 8 8 The heartwarming book went on to sell more than a million copies and, at this week's Hay Literary Festival, Raynor described the moment she found out that Gillian was going to play her in the film. She said: 'I thought, 'How is that ever going to work? She's so perfect, so glamorous, so beautiful. How is she going to capture me at such a raw moment in my life?' ' The tent sex scene with White Lotus star Jason did not feature in the book, but was added by writers for the movie adaptation, which was released on Friday. Raynor added: 'There's only one particularly hot scene in that book — I gave them big waves. I got back a sweaty scene in a tent.' For Gillian, playing Raynor became one of her most challenging roles, but one that she was desperate to play. She said: 'I read the book and I couldn't speak for days. I was really profoundly affected by it. I think I might have threatened them within an inch of their lives to hire me!' Gillian has always been drawn to playing strong women and found that becoming those characters on screen instilled a new-found confidence. Rebellious teenager She said on Fearne Cotton's Happy Place podcast: 'I think it awakened in me a kind of stirring in my own sense of my sexual self and sensual self. 'I don't know whether it had always been asleep or whether it was awake when I was younger and then was asleep. 'But the fact that so much of my career as an actor — starting as Scully in my 20s, where suddenly I was consistently called on to be the smartest in the room — I was asked to show up and believe that I could do those things. "It showed that I had it somewhere in me to look that smart, to be that powerful, to be that confident, to walk that way.' Gillian was born in Chicago but raised in London during her early years. Most of the time when I show up to work, particularly at the beginning of a job, I think I am going to be fired. Every single job, the first two days are hell. Then the family moved back to the US when she was 11 and she later became a rebellious teenager. She went through a lesbian phase, was arrested and dabbled in punk — getting into what she called 'dangerous things'. By the time she was 14 she was in therapy. Ten years later, while living on benefits in Michigan, she landed the X-Files job — and found overnight global fame. But Gillian admits she still struggles to conform. She told the We Can Do Hard Things podcast: 'I always have been a bit of an outsider. I didn't really make a lot of friends in high school. 'My hair was always not unlike it is right now — ratty and not curled. 'Then I started wearing oversized thrift clothes, cinching it with a belt, pointy black boots with buckles, and I started to shave my head and have a Mohawk. Also, by then I'd had a lesbian relationship that they all knew about and teased me about. 'I was kind of on the outside. Then true to form, on graduation night, I was actually arrested, because I tried to break into the high school with my then boyfriend to glue the locks shut.' 8 8 'I started panicking' Gillian, who has been married twice, currently lives in London where she has been in a long-term relationship with The Crown writer Peter Morgan. Mum to daughter Piper, 30, and sons Oscar, 18, and 16-year-old Felix, she juggles acting with running the soft drinks company she founded with Peter's son, Robin. And despite being at the top of her game for more than 30 years, she admits she still feels insecure at times. On playing Margaret Thatcher in 2020, she said: 'It was daunting. From the moment I said yes, I started panicking. "She is a big deal in the UK. And she's a very divisive character and however people feel about her, there's no middle ground — they either absolutely hate her or they love her. "So I knew people felt very strongly, and obviously I wanted to do a good job. So I felt quite a lot of pressure.' She added: 'Most of the time when I show up to work, particularly at the beginning of a job, I think I am going to be fired. 'Every single job, the first two days are hell. Literally I think that I'm going to be fired and that the producers are huddling around the monitor. I'm literally going, 'Oh my God, what have I done?' 'And so the point is that I can do that and act as if I am this confident person, despite having panic attacks. 'If I can do those things, then as far as I'm concerned, anybody can.' 8
Western Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Western Telegraph
NT Live: A Streetcar Named Desire showing at Torch Theatre
From director Benedict Andrews, the production was filmed live during a sold-out run at the Young Vic Theatre in 2014. The cast features Gillian Anderson, Vanessa Kirby, and Ben Foster in Tennessee Williams' timeless masterpiece, which explores the fragile world of Blanche as she seeks solace from her sister Stella amidst the chaos brought by Stanley Kowalski. This production is the fastest-selling in the Young Vic's history, receiving critical acclaim and 5-star reviews. It has been watched by 1.2 million people worldwide, making it one of NT Live's most popular titles. Anwen Francis, rom the Torch Theatre's marketing team, said: "A Streetcar Named Desire, one of the most critically acclaimed plays of the 20th century, will be released for cinema viewings on Thursday 5 June and the Torch Theatre is delighted to be showing the play the very same night as its international release." NT Live: A Streetcar Named Desire can be seen on the Torch Theatre screen on Thursday 5 June at 7pm. Ticket prices are £15, £13 for concessions, and £8.50 for U26. For tickets, phone the Box Office on 01646 695267 or visit the Torch Theatre website.
BBC News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Minehead locals "so excited" for The Salt Path film release
People who live along a coastal road where part of the new film adaptation of The Salt Path was set say they're very excited for its film, out on 30 May, stars Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, who play a married couple who walk the South West Coast Path after losing their home and one of them receiving an incurable early part of the film was shot in Minehead, alongside Porlock Weir, Bossington and various locations in Devon and who live on Quay Street in Minehead have fond memories of spotting Anderson and Isaacs outside their homes two years ago. Mandy Nixon's home overlooks where the filming took place and is one of those living on Quay Street who has read the book by Raynor and others have shared the book and passed it between houses since the filming first inspired their said: "We're all actually going together to see the film and we're very excited."Regarding the filming, she said: "We had to move our cars and they were here for two or three days." Mandy's husband Mark remembers it being "very, very busy and with lots of people coming to watch the filming" on their said he wanted to invited Anderson and Isaacs in for a cup of tea."We moved down here for the scenery, the hills, the sea... so we're really excited to watch the film," he added. A few houses down lives Mark Kingston-James, who also saw the cast filming outside his home in Minehead and photographed Gillian Anderson and the said: "We are the gateway to Exmoor and I've noticed since (the filming) an increase in walkers using the coast path."It shows what Minehead's got nature wise and I think it's a different angle."The film showcases some of Exmoor's most picturesque locations and was made with the help of Screen Somerset and the South West Coast Path Association (SWCPA) as well as Exmoor National Park, Visit Exmoor and Visit Salt Path is released in the UK on May 30.
BBC News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
The Salt Path: Melton woman who inspired film relives emotions
A woman who travelled across the South West Coastal Path with her terminally ill husband has said a film depicting their journey took her "right back" to those difficult Winn, a writer who grew up on a farm in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, said she lost her dream home in Wales in 2013 after a financial dispute just days after her husband Moth was diagnosed with Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD), a rare brain nothing to lose, the couple set off on a 630-mile trek from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and journey across England's largest uninterrupted path has now been made into a film - The Salt Path - featuring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. "As we were preparing to leave the house, and the bailiffs were knocking at the door, we were hiding under the stairs. We were not ready to go," Mrs Winn said."It was in those last moments that I saw a book about someone who had walked the coastal path with their dog."In that desperate time, it just seemed like the most obvious thing to do. All we wanted to do was pack our bags and take a walk." Five years on from the adventure, in 2018, Mrs Winn released her memoir entitled The Salt received nationwide acclaim, and was shortlisted for the 2018 Wainwright Prize, an award that celebrates travel-based writing."We had nowhere to go. We knew that when we stepped out of the door, we were going to be homeless."Moth's illness had no treatment, or no cure. I was drawn to following a line on the map. It gave us a purpose, and that's what it was all about." 'Huge in emotion' Just a few months after her book was published, Mrs Winn said she was approached by a producer and filming of 'The Salt Path' started in the summer of 2023."It makes no sense. I remember the day we met. There was a knock at the door, and there was Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs outside."They told me to put the kettle on. That's not what is supposed to happen to a girl from Melton Mowbray," she Winn said the film took her "straight back to those emotions that were so difficult". "The producer and director have created something that's sparse in dialogue."It's huge in emotion and it urges anyone to focus on the now. Just focus on now and all will turn out differently tomorrow," she said.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Walk on the wild side: Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs on their epic hiking movie The Salt Path
'I have played a lot of powerful, well-dressed women in my career,' says Gillian Anderson. They flash before your eyes: Margaret Thatcher (The Crown), Eleanor Roosevelt (The First Lady), Emily Maitlis (the Prince Andrew/Newsnight drama Scoop) – as well as the formidable sex therapist in the Netflix hit Sex Education, a role that led to her being inundated with dildos from over-enthusiastic fans. 'These are all women in control of themselves and their environment. Any time I have an opportunity to steer against that, particularly lately, it's of interest to me.' There is steering in another direction, and then there is the screeching handbrake turn represented by her role in The Salt Path, adapted from Raynor Winn's 2018 memoir of homelessness and hope along the coastline of England's south-west. Playing Winn, Anderson is shown making a single teabag stretch for several cuppas, withdrawing the final £1.38 from her bank account, and warming her blistered feet by a pub fire. A typical day begins with her peeing in the undergrowth. It's a far cry from Agent Scully in The X-Files. Winn's response to a double catastrophe in her life in 2013 was to embark on the lengthy South West Coast Path walk with her husband, Moth. The film's opening scene shows the couple's tent being flooded during a King Lear-level storm. A flashback then reveals how they ended up in this sorry, soggy state. A bad investment left them saddled with crippling debts and the couple lost the farm in Wales where they had brought up their now-adult children. While cowering in the hallway from bailiffs, Winn took inspiration from a cherished book glimpsed among their partly packed belongings: Five Hundred Mile Walkies, in which Mark Wallington recounts the trek he and his dog took around the south-west. He must have miscalculated the journey, however. It is in fact 630 miles, including many steep ascents and descents. And as if penury and homelessness were not challenging enough, Moth had recently been diagnosed with a rare brain disease, corticobasal syndrome, and advised by doctors to rest. Stairs, he was told, would be particularly problematic. Twelve years and those 630 miles later, Moth Winn is, miraculously, still alive. He is played in the film by Jason Isaacs, who sits beside his screen wife today in a London hotel room. Their contrasting body language is instantly revealing. The 56-year-old Anderson, friendly but with a casually authoritative aura, is perched side-saddle in her chair, one leg crossed away from me, so that she seems almost to be looking back over her shoulder in my direction as she speaks. Isaacs, 61, leans forward, elbows on knees, keen to get stuck in. It is as if they are still playing their parts from The Salt Path: Raynor Winn, with her patina of reserve and caution, and Moth, eager to make sure everyone else is comfortable, a people-pleaser even when the people aren't worth pleasing, as some of those they meet on their travels manifestly are not. A passerby berates them for wild camping, beating their tent with his stick. In a scene that hasn't made it from page to screen, Winn is humiliated by a woman who spots her scrambling on the ground for dropped coins and assumes she is drunk. Despite those flashes of conflict, Winn had doubts about how her story would work on screen. 'It's about two people and a path,' she tells me from the home she and Moth now share in Cornwall. 'I couldn't grasp how that could be a film.' But Marianne Elliott, the acclaimed stage director of War Horse, Angels in America, and Company, makes her screen directing debut here and tells me she always saw The Salt Path as inherently cinematic. 'Ray and Moth hardly talk on their walk,' she says. 'They are carrying their trauma on their back, but then they slowly calm down and start to look up and engage with the majestic landscapes. And they are changed by it. It felt like nature was playing with them, like a wild beast – sometimes giving them beauty and wonder, and sometimes battering them cruelly. They were reformed by the elements, if you like.' Playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, who adapted The Salt Path for the screen, says she saw nature as the key to unlocking the film version. 'Any reservations were about the walking,' she says. 'You know: how do we make walking dynamic for that amount of time? It felt like we needed almost to take the weather and the landscape as a character. It needed to be a film with a lot of silence. It's not some chatty, walky comedy.' Watching Isaacs trudging across English landscapes, however magnificent, feels incongruous after all those scenes of him suffering existential despair in luxurious five-star surroundings in the Thailand-set third season of The White Lotus. I assume he will be heartily sick of talking about the series by now, but it is he who brings up the similarity between the characters he plays. 'They're both men who lose everything. And they react in very different ways, which is a measure of who they are.' His character in The White Lotus was prone to suicidal ideations. So, too, was the apparently upbeat Moth. 'He laughs all the time, even when he's describing the toll his disease has taken on him. But he felt suicidal on the walk. He and Ray were crippled with shame, and the future was this abyss for them. They hid that from one another. They constantly made each other laugh. Acting is a game of pretend, and that's what they were both doing.' What were Anderson's first impressions of Raynor? 'I was surprised at how guarded she was,' she says. 'Of course, it must be strange: you've got two relatively famous actors who are going to play you showing up at your house. But it was interesting to encounter a certain steeliness. It was informative for me to see that.' 'You can be quite steely,' Isaacs says. 'You've got that in you.' 'Oh, definitely,' she agrees. 'I know that about myself.' Having been surprised when her memoir was optioned, Winn says she was even more taken aback by the casting. 'I remember thinking, 'How is that going to work? How will someone so perfect and glamorous capture me in that raw state?'' Things got even more confusing when she told Moth the news. 'He thought I meant Pamela Anderson.' During the first meeting between the four of them, the Winns explained to the actors the details of how they packed, knowing that they couldn't take more than what could be carried on their backs. 'Then they put the tent up for us right there in the living room,' Isaacs says. 'I'm not sure if I'd … ever … camped … before,' says Anderson, stringing the words out as though anticipating derision. 'You'd never pitched a tent?' asks Isaacs in mild disbelief. 'Not as far as I can remember,' she says. 'I might have pitched one for my kids in the back garden.' Isaacs says he is 'all about climbing things, jumping off things, swimming through things. Canyons and stuff. I like extreme physical experiences. Even at my advanced age, I see something and I think, 'That'd be fun to climb up. Or slide down.' I'm still a 12-year-old boy trapped in a 100-year-old body.' As a child, he went wild camping with his family in Wales. 'We'd get woken by farmers. Or livestock.' Once, they parked in heavy fog on a small hill and pitched their tent. 'You couldn't see your hand in front of you. We woke up to find we'd camped on a roundabout.' Anderson gasps and claps her hands: 'That's such a good story!' The Salt Path began life as a diary that Winn kept on the walk, and which she later wrote up as a gift for Moth – and, more urgently, as a way of preserving the experience for him as his memory began to fade. That diary spawned a Big Issue article and then a book, nominated for the Costa prize in 2018. The judges called it 'an absolutely brilliant story that needs to be told about the human capacity to endure and keep putting one foot in front of another'. The picture will doubtless reignite interest in the South West Coast Path, and attract more walkers after a recent downturn. To anyone tempted to wonder whether walking is having 'a moment', what with the film of The Salt Path following David Nicholls's novel You Are Here (about a friendship that blooms on a 200-mile coast-to-coast hike across the north of England), it is as well to remember that what the Winns did was born out desperation. They found beauty and a kind of salvation, and the walk even seemed to help Moth to defy his doctors' prognosis, but it was often a ghastly, hardscrabble journey. 'They were desperate and lonely and scared,' says Isaacs. 'They wanted to avoid towns because they got treated badly there and they had no money to buy food. They were happier by themselves away from people. They experienced both sides of human nature: tremendous compassion and generosity but also abuse and neglect. They were frightened of the police and of anyone who would come along and dehumanise them just because they were homeless. Though the book itself was a love letter to Moth, there's a marked lack of sentimentality when they speak about what happened. They got all kinds of different benefits from the walk but they still wanted a warm roof over their heads.' One thing that is impossible to capture on screen, he says, is their persistent hunger. 'It colours everything. We do our best to tell the story but that's a physical ache. They would stand at cafe windows watching people eat.' Anderson is nodding along. 'Ray talks in the book about pretending to eat, and how the fantasy of eating, the act of moving the mouth, does half the job,' she says. Winn tells me that living below the breadline has altered her for ever. 'It changes how you feel about material things,' she says. 'Having let go of everything we had, possessions don't concern me in the same way they did before. Anything that doesn't enrich your life just gets in the way. The stuff we gather can easily start to control us.' Winn says her life is much as it ever was, though Moth now tires more easily, and requires extensive physiotherapy. 'Except without the worry of paying the rent.' As the author of several bestselling books, does she allow herself the occasional luxury these days? 'I do,' she sighs. 'Sometimes it's nice to have the whole pasty instead of just half.' The Salt Path is in UK and Irish cinemas from 30 May.
