Gillian Anderson attends the Jacquemus menswear Spring/Summer 2026 show in 2025.Arnold Jerocki/Getty Images
Gillian Anderson poses at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.Lionel Hahn/Getty Images
In a scene from the 2018 action comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me, Kate McKinnon’s character is being interrogated by two Secret Service agents when the MI6 boss, played by Anderson, walks in. I don’t remember much of the movie, but a line from McKinnon’s bumbling monologue after she encounters Anderson, whom she calls “the Beyoncé of the government”, goes: “I have so much respect for you that it has circled around into objectification.” Not an unreasonable reaction, even if it’s a fictional one. At 58, Anderson’s beauty has less to do with grooming and more to do with her geniality. It’s 8am in LA, and although her team has requested that we turn off our videos since it’s too early for her to be in hair and makeup, Anderson shows up fresh-faced, save for a smattering of eyeliner, flyaways framing her face like a dandelion. There’s an AirPod in one ear, which she affectionately refers to as her emotional support AirPod. When she laughs, she does so generously, crow’s feet be damned. To put it plainly, she is captivating. “I’ve been very lucky with genes,” she brushes me off. “Shamefully, I am quite lazy about my beauty routine and tend to sleep with my makeup on after a shoot. I’m trying hard to do that less.” What really makes her glow, the actor insists, is connecting to the better part of herself. “I love talking to women about empowerment—that lights a fire under me. Any time I tap into that grounded, altruistic part of myself, it’s like a form of being of service. I think, more than anything, that is what is perceived as beauty.” In response to Anderson’s misplaced modesty, I hold up my phone to show her an Instagram carousel containing 18 photos of her clicked over the years, captioned: “We don’t talk about Gillian Anderson enough.” Almost every comment under that post—which includes a picture of her wearing glasses and a backpack to the Fox Upfront Party in 1996, a photo of her at the 2001 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in a thong-baring Eduardo Lucero dress, a candid from the Bond Girls Are Forever London book launch in 2003—is some version of: “Speak for yourself, I talk about Gillian Anderson at least once a day.” There’s that Duchenne smile again. She may be humble about how she looks, but even she can’t deny that these images would look great on a fashion moodboard. “Fine, you win,” she grin-sighs. Not quite a ‘very clever’, but I’m logging it as a hat-trick.
This interview with Gillian Anderson appears in Vogue India’s September-October 2026 issue. Subscribe here.
