A Streetcar Named Desire and Gillian Anderson’s top 10 performances so far

Gillian Anderson’s top 10 screen and stage performances so far

Gillian Anderson is probably best known, in a mainstream sort of sense, for her work as Special Agent (and medical doctor!) Dana Scully on The X-Files. You don’t spend nine seasons, two films, and then a bonus two seasons worth of revival time on a wildly popular TV show—with a measurable impact on women in STEM, no less—without being pretty well known for it, after all.

But to reduce her work down to that one role, however excellent it was, would do the actress a great injustice. Scully might have been the role that made people stand up and take notice, but Gillian Anderson’s work in television, film, and theatre goes far beyond the scope of anything The X-Files ever gave her.

She has taken on iconic roles and made them wholly her own. Anderson’s utterly devastating turn as Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire is but one unforgettable example. With that being said, though, she has also portrayed her fair share of brand new characters, even in somewhat smaller productions.

What are Gillian Anderson’s top 10 performances so far?

While primarily known for dramatic work, just the right delivery and/or the perfect raised eyebrow can create a hilarious effect. Certain episodes of The X-Files and Sex Education have shown just how funny Gillian can be; but if you haven’t seen her brief performance in The Spy Who Dumped Me, you have most certainly missed out.

All this is to say she’s really, really good at what she does. And she hasn’t yet shown us even a fraction of her range, even after decades of being pretty well known.

With a lot of buzz about her upcoming role as Margaret Thatcher in The Crown Season 4, we decided to take a look back at Gillian Anderson’s performances over the years and attempt to rank the top 10. The difficulty, of course, is that there really is no such thing as a weak performance from her. There is also no such thing as a one-note character for her, thus making the creation of this ranking next to impossible.

So, this top 10 comes with a caveat: You could rearrange it any way you like and probably still have a very strong list with good reasoning for its order; you could even replace one or two performances here or there with something that was left out and have the same effect.