Picture of the Week: Gillian Anderson for Esquire, by Rankin
It just occurred to me, while I was cleaning my kitchen, that we generally don’t do a lot of pictures on here except for the rare occason where my mind runs wild with a 60-picture movie re:View. Which is a shame really, especially because my hard drives are stuffed to the last byte with images I adore. So, I thought from now on I’ll make an effort to share one of them every week.
All right, let’s bring on the pretty pictures.
Picture of the Week #1:
Gillian Anderson, shot by Rankin for the Esquire Augst 2008 issue.
(View the full set in HQ)
Why this picture?
Well, first of all, because IMHO Gillian Anderson is one of the most beautiful people on the planet. And I love what they did with this shoot with regard to her, uhm, intense efforts to distance herself from her legendary X Files character Dana Scully. (She tends to be a bit funny about her most famous of roles and won’t even sign X Files stuff at times.) But clearly, as Esquire ran these pictures along with an interview to coincide with the release of the second X Files movie in August 2008, they had to do *something* X Files-related.
I think Rankin’s photos are fabulously playful about Gillian’s X Files history – they’re a sweet little parody of her obsession with avoiding being typecast as Dana Scully for the rest of her life. I love how they captured her nature in this shoot – which, away from the X Files set, is all contagious laughs and goofing around. The woman in the pictures, with the mischievous smile and the wild curly hair, couldn’t be further from the character on the show. And then they give her all those wonderfully cheesy props, kind of like a geeky inside joke – et voilà, we’ve got some of the most stylish and yet comic X Files promo pictures ever made.
Chosing a favourite from the shoot is almost impossible. I went for the Tentacles from Outer Space picture because it was the first that made me gasp when I opened the magazine and that wasn’t even because of the side boob…well, not only. But the picture had to fight off some tough competition from the Alien Facelift and the Naughty E.T. Nailbite!
Check back next week for picture #2. I promise it won’t be about Gillian Anderson and I will keep the rambling bit short.
That was a really cool, and goofy, description of the photo session. You’ve got a terrific sense of humour. :D
As to signing and distancing herself from The X-Files, she doesn’t seem to mind her iconic status anymore and literally ten days ago signed tons of X-Files stuff for charity. The only times she doesn’t sin X-F items is when she plays in the theatre, and is probably contractually obliged to promote the play rather than the series.
You know, if you want to post more about Gillian Anderson, I totally don’t mind. ;P
Have always been a big fan, thanks for letting us in on her photo shoot, I think she’s so versatile actually…especially when it comes to photography. :)