Apparently this story came out last week when People Magazine put out their “Most Beautiful” cover, but it was only on the main page for a moment and I missed it. Hat tip to The Huffington Post for featuring it. Gillian Anderson has been open about the fact that she’s not into plastic surgery or injectables, and it shows. She looks so lovely and natural at 47, and that is a rarity in Hollywood. (She’s British and lives in London so I suppose she’s more immune than most celebrity women.) Anderson tells People that she’s not ruling out plastic surgery, and it sounds like she’s not shaming women who opt for it, but that she wants to be able to age naturally. That’s a good way to look at it.
At 47, I feel quite strongly that I wouldn’t do plastic surgery, but also, I know that I am a vain woman,” The X-Files star tells PEOPLE. “Talk to me in ten years – they may have invented something which feels less invasive, and then it’s possible that the line will be easier to cross.”
“I don’t want to say never,” she continues. “I don’t want to be hypocritical about it. But also, at this juncture, I just hope that I would be able to embrace these stages of my aging face, and not feel like something was wrong and that it needed to be fixed through surgery.”
[From People Magazine, online and print edition]
I searched our site for “Gillian Anderson plastic surgery” and “Gillian Anderson Botox” and the only two stories which came up were from four years ago when Kaiser was marveling how lovely Anderson looked at 43. Her skin was dewy and glowing although she could move her forehead and she didn’t look pulled or filled. It’s possible she’s opting for lasers or another non-invasive technique. Plus she didn’t comment on Botox or fillers, just plastic surgery. Whatever she’s doing, sign me up! I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been using this little microcurrent device to smooth fine lines and improve my skin. I’ve had it for almost four months and I swear that it works. Those lines on the lower sides of my mouth (which I just learned are called “oral commissures”) have reduced a little. Maybe I’m just desperate to see changes though. I also am trying to “embrace my aging face” and that involves everything short of going to the dermatologist – yet.
Here’s a selfie Gillian took with a fan. She has freckles!
Photos credit: WENN.com
I am also a vain woman trying to embrace my aging face.
Me too!
It’s completely natural to care about your appearance (like, even birds want to look all pretty to attract mates! it’s in our DNA as animals, has been since day one and wasn’t put in our heads by Cosmo) and I love that she admits it. I’m into everything that’s natural and cruelty free etc etc but I am not, and never will be one of those people who are happy to get wrinkled and saggy and don’t do anything about it “because it’s what’s inside that matters”. No. I’m working on my inside as well but I’ll kep doing my squats and applying sunscreen daily too.
Sometimes I wake up in the morning and look at the mirror and wonder if I really did sleep the night before.
“What a drag it is to get old”
there is this wrinkle around my left eye and is new and Honestly I told my gf I was just flabbergasted wondering; SO THIS IS HOW IT STARTS HUH?!?!
Lol, I know just what you mean. I’ve always looked young for my age, and dealt well with aging in my 40’s. But since I hit 50, my looks are going rapidly downhill and time is catching up with me, and I’m only 52! Mostly, I just look exhausted, whether I feel that way or not. And recently I’ve noticed that my left eyelid is starting to sag……just the left one, mind you! So now I have one droopy eye. Before that, I noticed that my my loose neck skin makes me look like I have no chin in profile. Sigh……it’s just one thing after another!
Luckily, my husband’s eyesight it deteriorating as rapidly as my face, so he still insists that I look the same. 🙂
me ten! It’s really just the thinning skin under my eyes that bugs me. I don’t mind my crow’s feet/laugh lines or my Jim Carrey smile lines.
Same. Recently took a passport picture and you don’t realize you’ve age that much until you compare it to your last. Yikes! Feel like yelling at my old picture “Put some sunblock on silly, trust me, you’ll appreciate that advice later”! lol
Gillian is gorgeous and I applaud her for this. I too am a 47 year old woman. It’s not easy to see the changes, but I am glad there are others who opt to grow old gracefully too!
She’s a class act. I wanna be her when I grow up.
She looks fantastic. I’m a vain aging woman as well lollll. And 54. I started using botox at 50 and get laser resurfacing once a year. I’d like to do it more but it does cost. I like my forehead smooth and so far, that’s enough to keep me satisfied. i also try to eat really well and (mostly) use sunscreen plus have good skin genes from my mother. I look natural, but I look better than my peers who don’t use botox or lasers, etc. Not bragging, it’s the truth. A little botox is a wonderful thing!
Good for you, Pandy, and I bet you look great.
Honestly, Gillian is like Julianne Moore to me–I think she looks even more beautiful now than she did 10, 15 years ago. She’s just aging amazingly well–and I hate using that phrase–as if women are obligated to conform to a certain ideal as we get older–but Gillian just has that kind of facial structure and features that age beautifully.
Also, when is The Fall coming back? Man, she was so fantastic on that show.
I’m still searching for that necklace Melissandre wore on GOT.
So yes, I am a vain woman as well.
Lol
BS! What an hypocrite! She’s a well known patient of Dr. Colbert in NYC. She may not had a surgery YET, but oh boy she sure does botox, and fillers and the famous peeling Colbert does to her famous clients. He’s just so damn good at make it all look natural, and that’s why his clients are among the most natural botox users: Naomi Watts, Angelina Jolie, Robin Wright, Julianne Moore: they all look their age and not overdone: the opposite of the Nicole Kidmans and others. But Gillian is a liar and she’s playing with the semantics and the notion that people often confuses cosmetic procedures with surgical procedures.
Couldn’t agree more.
How do you know they’re all his clients?
Google Dr Colbert dermatologist NY famous clients and you will find .
I didnt know any of this but its pretty clear on the Fall that she has something done. I thought it was botox because her face was ridiculously stiff and unnatural looking. I like the woman a lot but she is lying.
I didn’t really notice it on The Fall (I thought she looked great there), but definitely on the X-Files.
There are recent pics of her that clearly demonstrate that she had nice, not too deep lid creases which she never had as a younger woman- that’s a lid reduction. She was always somewhat hooded as a younger woman. These pics show that she is beginning to droop again, and you can see the extra fold/crease from surgery. Compare 1990s X-Files to The Fall. There is a stark difference. Definitely had at least an upper lid reduction, and good for her! Just don’t lie about it.
-disclaimer: as a 50 year old (knowing what my mom’s eyes looked like- she needed it medically, droopy lids affected her vision) I see a lid reduction in my future!
A 2004 pic – I see no difference to be honest? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Gillian_anderson_lk.jpg/486px-Gillian_anderson_lk.jpg
Yeah, her face (and all the others you mention) is definitely more stiff. Probably not surgery, and maybe not specifically Botox, but something similar or fillers or some such thing is going on.
Not surprised about Julianne Moore. I think she looks great, but no 55-year-old woman, no matter how well she takes care of herself, has skin that smooth without some assistance.
And Robin Wright has been candid about her moderate use of Botox, at least.
exactly! I love how Robin was so nonchalant and genuine about admitting the botox: it’s not a big deal! Everybody could notices who does it or not, and I don’t know why some actresses keep lying about it, doing nothing but continuing the stigma of procedures when everybody can notice they had work done. The “I woke up like this, I’m naturally blessed” sh*t has to stop, we, the audience, the fans, are not idiots! So yeah, I’m calling BS on Anderson. She admitted the wigs bc she was loosing her hair and it was fried, why it has to be different for the procedures?
I thought she said she wasn’t against stuff that was too invasive, so I didn’t think she was being a hypocrite. Does botox count as highly invasive? She said the following: “Talk to me in ten years – they may have invented something which feels less invasive, and then it’s possible that the line will be easier to cross.”
When she says she’s embracing her aging face, I assume that to mean that she knows that she will look old at a certain point no matter how many procedures she gets, not that she won’t get the procedures at all. Nicole Kidman has done a ton of stuff, and she doesn’t necessarily look younger even if she does look smooth.
I agree that she looks very good for her age. I also agree with everyone else I know that she has had something done, probably Botox, maybe more, because her face on the new X-files was completely unrecognisable to everyone who loved the show back then. Notice how her forehead doesn’t move?
I won’t blame anyone for getting work done, it’s a very personal choice, but I do point the fingers at those who try to make everyone else look bad by pretending that they are all “natural”. She is NOT natural like that. Doesn’t make her any less beautiful, does it? So why not just admit to it?
I think people in Hollywood probably have plastic surgery all the time for any minor reason, so maybe these actresses that didn’t get anything done feel more “natural”? Botox seems already to be the norm. It’s still hyprocritical to me, but they do have different standards.
Yeah I don’t believe her when she says she hasn’t had botox. I too watched the X-files reboot and her face was unnaturally stiff. She has to have had injectables. Why lie about it?
I absolutely agree. Her stiff face was actually distracting me from the storyline. I thought it was the most obvious botox I’d seen lately.
“She is NOT natural like that. Doesn’t make her any less beautiful, does it? So why not just admit to it?”
I don’t think she looks less beautiful but I am less likely to feel bad about myself knowing someone had a procedure done. Maybe that’s why they don’t like telling anybody — they probably know that some of us are more likely to envy or not feel lesser to a beauty that is natural than one that is not.
Sorry I meant to say: “they probably know that some of us are more likely to envy or feel lesser to a beauty that is natural than one that is not.”
I’m not sure what you mean about her? She looked like herself, just 15 years older. I also took note many times of how her forehead moved and wrinkled in the reboot because that’s pretty rare to see.
I absolutely adore Gillian, she’s both my role model and forever crush and has been since I was 10, and I wouldn’t care if she DID use some kind of injectable – I’m just surprised by your opinion because i was noticing the significant brow wrinkling as I watched the show.
I think one of the reasons she looks so damn beautiful is not f-cking with her face + having the opportunity to have high-end skincare since she was in her early twenties. When you see candid shots with little to no makeup she looks a bit more her age than she does on camera, but she has a youthful face.
Minor point – I think she lives in London, but she isn’t British. I think she’s American.
She was born in Chicago but spent time as a kid in London.
Living in the UK for a few years does not make you British–believe me, no British person would ever consider someone born in the US to American parents anything other than American. She could take British citizenship and renounce her American citizenship, and she’d still never be considered anything other than an American with a UK passport (at least in the UK).
She’s bidialectal though. Switches between accents effortlessly, you’d never know she wasn’t british. Her accent was impeccable in The fall. Her character is a great example of a well written female character, by the way. The kind of role that most actresses her age (actually, any age really) can only dream about, sadly.
I thought she was a dual citizen. Culturally, she seems both British and American — especially when she starts switching accents (which I don’t really get, but whatever works for you, I guess).
On Wikipedia, she’s referred to as American-British, and when asked about national identity she says the following:
“I’ve been asked whether I feel more like a Brit than an American and I don’t know what the answer to that question is. I know that I feel that London is home and I’m very happy with that as my home. I love London as a city and I feel very comfortable there. In terms of identity, I’m still a bit baffled.”
Thank you. I thought it was just me who didn’t think she was British. I knew about her Chicago connection but had no idea about London.
But I guess if we’re talking about complexions, her British heritage is a factor, I guess.
It’s so strange.. I don’t know anyone in my life that has had plastic surgery. I have friends younger and older. I know too often people assume everyone Hollywood is doing something. I’m sure many are; but not everyone.
For all intents and purposes they are all getting something done.
She’s never looked better, in my opinion.
I think she botoxed the sh-t out of her face for the X-Files reboot. She looked really unlike herself, which is a shame. She’s normally gorgeous, but it looked like she could barely move her face.
Sooo sexy!
she looks fabulous!!!!!
?
Watching the new X Files the first thing I said to myself is that she’s gotten some injectables done and it looks good.
She’s always been beautiful and she’ll be beautiful until the day she dies. She has really great bone structure.
Retin-A has worked wonders on my crows feet and forming naso-labial lines. I want to try Botox between my eyebrows as a treatment for depression, but our tax return vanished quicker than I thought it would, so that’s been put off!
I couldn’t watch the X-Files reboot because the first 2 minutes were so bad. Duchovny’s face looked like it was made of rubber. I can’t imagine what he had done to it.
You 40s and 50s young ‘uns- wait till 60
hits😱! Re Gillian- she is gorgeous, but I like her better with a deeper auburn hue to her hair. She works in a youth driven industry, so don’t blame her keeping her options open. And she and The Fall are terrific- I want season 3 soon.
Honestly? To me, she looks younger at 47 without plastic surgery than some early 30somethings in LA WITH plastic surgery. Gorgeous. Plastic surgery is almost always obvious. Women that have had it done have a distinctive puffiness. If you can tell it’s been done, then whats the point? Doesn’t make you look more beautiful but transparently insecure.
Gillian has always had wonderful, thoughtful things to say about being a woman in the spotlight and trying to find herself. I’ve admired her for years. I never thought she had plastic surgery, just a bad wig on the new XF and heavy makeup.
She looks great! Not overly plastic.
I just turned 47 and I’m also trying to embrace aging altogether. Luckily the folks in my family look younger than we are so I can feel good about that for a while. I have long admired Helen Mirren and her example of Aging gracefully.
She is gorgeous and I love her. I find myself, at 46 years old, always examining the faces of high school classmates on FB and comparing their lines to mine. I will admit that two months ago, I got really tired of the “angry” vertical wrinkle between my eyes and I got botox there. I loved it so much, I got little on my forehead too. And I am very happy with the results. I’m also happy with the thought that the botox is keeping those angry lines from forming ( I must be frowning A LOT), thus delaying further wrinkling right there.
I don’t want fillers, or plastic surgery. But little help to keep my vanity soothed has brightened up my day.
Pretty sure she isn’t British. A little googling never hurt.
She’s not British, by the way. She just lives in London.
Er, she’s had quite a lot of work. Some eye and nose work years ago, a brow lift and recently a ton of Botox and fillers. Her face was tight on The Fall, and ridiculous on the recent X Files season. There was one episode where she’d clearly just been ‘refreshed’ and it looked like it took enormous effort to move her face at all.
Like so many women, she has become more attractive with age.
I’m jealous of her neck. I’m almost 4 years younger and my neck does not look smooth like hers. She looks amazing. Not just for her age. For any age.
Who cares if she gets a little help, I would too if I were my 40. I’m in my early 20s and this stresses me out to no end . The ageism women Face? I hope it changes a little by the time I’m 40. Good for her, she still looks amazing.
27 and got my first gray hair…. and plucked the f%^K out it ….
But honestly i dont feel away about people doing plastic surgery…do what makes you feel good…just DONT ACT LIKE ITS GENETICS (message: for hollywood and entertainment)
She looks fantastic. I am sure she has had work done, but it is tasteful.