What Gillian Anderson Has Revealed About Her Sexuality

Gillian Anderson has been in long-term relationships since her days on "The X-Files." On January 1, 1994, "The Crown" star married the iconic 1990s show's art director, Clyde Klotz, in Hawaii after a whirlwind romance, according to a 1996 Here Magazine article, via GillianAnderson.Ws. They wasted no time before starting a family. In September 1994, Klotz and Anderson welcomed their daughter Piper, a pregnancy that had to be hidden on "The X-Files" via — you guessed it — an alien abduction, The Guardian reported. But their marriage didn't last. By 1997, they were divorced.

Anderson remarried in December 2002 to Kenyan-born journalist and documentarian Julian Ozanne in an intimate ceremony in his native country. Once again, the marriage didn't last. Anderson and Ozanne announced their separation in April 2006. Anderson moved on pretty quickly, welcoming a son, Oscar, with businessman Mark Griffiths that November, according to The Sunday Times. Anderson gave birth to the couple's second son, Felix, in October 2008. Anderson and Griffith never tied the knot, but they were together for six years. According to Us Weekly, they split in 2012, making it her longest relationship. 

Most recently, Anderson was in a relationship with "The Crown" showrunner Peter Morgan, which ended 2020, according to the Daily Mail. Anderson and Morgan, who began dating in 2016, famously refused to live together, she told The Times. While her public relationships have all been with men, Anderson's sexuality is more fluid than her dating history might suggest.

While she is best known for her relationships with men, Gillian Anderson has been in same-sex relationships since her teens. "I was in a relationship with a girl for a long time when I was in high school," she told Out Magazine in 2012, referring to her time in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That relationship, paired with the way she dressed and the fact she grew up in London, made Anderson an easy target for bullies. For Anderson, dating a girl felt normal, so she felt no need to define her sexuality based on it. "If I had thought I was 100% gay, would it have been a different experience for me?" she pondered.

Her high school girlfriend wasn't the only woman she dated. Though she doesn't often elaborate, Anderson told The Times in 2018 she dated a woman suffering from terminal brain cancer. Still, they were the minority in her list of partners. That's why she never made a big deal about that part of her sexuality. "It's possible that my attitude around it came, on some level, from knowing that I still liked boys," she told Out.

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, Anderson's revelations caused an uproar on social media, particularly among religious circles. That was the only time in her career she considered responding to haters. "I was so close — and I mean minutes away — from tweeting back, but somebody had the presence of mind stopped me," she told The Telegraph in 2015.

Even though Gillian Anderson isn't afraid to disclose her past same-sex relationships, she considers herself to be cisgender. "I am an actively heterosexual woman who celebrates however people want to express their sexuality," Anderson told the Evening Standard in 2014. She reiterated her sexual orientation while discussing her character in "The Fall," a British detective who is comfortable with her own sexuality. "I identify myself as heterosexual, and I'm not saying that I'm suddenly promiscuous, but I'm just saying that somehow ... it awakened something and gave me permission to be comfortable with myself as a woman," she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015.

While Anderson never had a publicly known same-sex relationship, she was always open to it. It just didn't happen. "I wouldn't discount [dating a woman again]," she told The Telegraph. "I did it before and I'm not closed to that idea. To me a relationship is about loving another human being; their gender is irrelevant." 

Even when she was with Peter Morgan (pictured above), Anderson hinted a same-sex relationship might still be on the horizon. "I could be in a relationship with a woman next year," she told The Times in 2018. She likes to keep her love life open to different possibilities, though she enjoys stability. Balancing both aspects is what she strives for. "I think it's important that it's a daily choice," she said. "Part of me looks long-term — as long as there's always a back door."