Dana Scully, the power-dressing strawberry blonde half of The X-Files' paranormal investigating FBI team, is the smartest woman on TV. She's a trained medical doctor, a dab hand with an autopsy scalpel and the finest student in her FBI class. And she's sexy too, in a sultry and appealingly natural way. She's the calming influence on The X-Files, reacting in a motherly fashion to Mulder's excitable and outlandish boy scout theories about man-eating worm beasts-raising just an eyebrow to register her utter disbelief. And although she has an infuriating habit of looking the wrong way whenever aliens land or ghosts appear, she's always prepared to blow away perps to save Mulder's arse when he gets in too deep. So far she's been chased by pre-historic bugs and flesh-eating cavewomen, experimented on by sinsister government forces, been terrorised, shot at and kidnapped by aliens. And yet, despite everything, she manages to keep a cool head-offering plausible solution when the implausible seems the only answer. And did you know that she's laughed only once, and that was in the pilot episode more than two years ago? So perhaps because she does it so infrequently, one of her smiles is worth a million of anyone else's.

   Trying to think of an equivalent anywhere on TV is near on impossible there are few enough heavyweight roles for women, even less that don't require some kind of contractual cleavage shots in every episode. Scully is renowned for her wits, not her tits. Even in such contemporary top-rated show such as ER and Friends, the females are seen before they're heard. If real-life nurses looked like the ones in ER, no one would get saved- male doctors would just stand around all day gawping at them; and isn't it just fantastic that three leggy, sexy, drop-dead stunners would end up sharing an apartment in Friends? And what of the almost obligatroy 'caught in the shower' and 'waking up in the middle of the night to answer the door' scenes that most shows have to deal with? Nobody knows if Scully sleeps with her gun and we'll probably never see. But there are plenty of guys who'd like the chance to find out.
    The X-Files is unique in many ways, not least because it's the first TV show in living memory where the sexual tension between the leads is destined to go unconsummated. The tide of TV history is against them; tradition demands that Mulder and Scully get the shags in. But let's hope not: remember the tragic way that Moonlighting fell apart once David and Maddie got it together between the sheets, or how Cheers hit the skids once Sam and Diane did the dirty? By comparison, the relationship between Mulder and Scully remains simmering in its underpants.

Gillian Anderson's most ardent supporters, the Internet-based Gillian Anderson Testosterone Brigade call her "a role model for women and an object of complete, unabated affection for men". Furthermore, their motto runs "Gillian Anderson Is Intellectually Drop Dead Gorgeous". And they're not wrong.
   Yet all we know of Anderson is her portrayal of Scully. She has risen seemingly without trace to star in the coolest cult hit on TV and yet there are no salacious tabloid rumors of a pre-XF career as a Hollywood stripper, and no lurid ex-lover's tales of coke-fuelled orgies to spice up the gossip columns. The GATB would have us believe that Anderson and Scully are one and the same person. Let's find out, shall we...
   Some facts about Gillian Anderson. She can juggle, "But not very well". She won a World Theratre Award for her role in Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends. The song that means the most to her right now is Hand in my Pocket by Alanis Morissette. The first boy she kissed was Adam and her favorite actors are Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange, Meryl Streep, and Gary Oldman. She's 27, married to a man called Klotz, has a daughter (Piper, 18 months old), her hair color in naturally ash-blonde and she wears black jeans, white T-shirts and scuffed tan cowboy boots on her days off. And her favorite expletive is 'fuck me'.
   "Fuck me", she says, rolling the words around. "It's really satisfying saying it". She says it again, louder: "Fuck me". Pause. She smiles and once more for luck: "FUCK ME!. It's my favorite swear word", she laughs. "I say it a lot, really quickly, like, 'fuck me!' Okay. What's your favorite swear word?" Fuck is always a winner. "Do you ever call anyone a wanker"? All the time. "What about bollocks?" Yeah, bollocks. "Hahhahaha! I was very into swearing as a child. I remember asking my mom what fuck meant, what fucking was, and I can't remember on my life what her response was. I remember hearing it in the playground when I was eight, off a kid who was 12. He fancied me and I fancied him but I was scared to death because his affection was like grown-up affection-he may have even have done the fuck word. And I had no idea what it meant."

   For nine months of the year, North Shore Studios in Vancouver is home to The X-Files cast and crew. Set off the main drag, the studio lot is made up of a handful of gargantuan, grey and white sound stages the size of aircraft hangers. Today it's minus 10 and the air is best described as bracing. A gunmetal grey trailer home, parked just to the left of the main XF set, is Gillian Anderson's sparsely furnished, functional home-from-home. Inside, Cleo, a large,black, slavering hound of undetermined breed is throwing toys from one end of the trailer. And she's farting. "Oh Cleo!" says Gillian. And then to me, "It's the food we're giving her". Through the glass panelled door we can see extras garbed as SWAT team members milling around, their breath turning to instant mist. Gillian plonks herself down on the sofa, dressed in her drab regulation FBI suit, cross legged, munching on a banana.
   Face to face the first thing you notice about Gillian Anderson is that she's smaller and prettier than she photographs-she's classy looking and beautiful in a Fifties movie-star kind of way. She stands maybe five-foot three and is spectrally thin. It's no secret that as an FBI agent in The XF her sexuality is purposefully downplayed, her curvy figure hidden in drab suits and big coats. For someone whose star is rapidly on the ascent, she's endearingly bullshit free, displaying not an ounce of Hollywood head swelling or big-star hauteur. She's fun, approachable and easy to warm to. She seems genuinely flattered when I ask her what it feels like to be a fantasy woman for men around the world. "The first time I heard it, I was surprised," she admits, leaning over and dumping her banana skin in the bin behind me. "Because I'm not sure how people get the sex symbol thing from Scully. But somebody can be very sexy and not be attractive to look at. There's an aura they have."

   Do you like they way you look? "I'm comfortable with my looks," she muses. "I've had to live with them for 27 years. I've been called 'an unconventional beauty' which is a strange kind of compliment, but I know that I'm not a marketable beauty in TV terms. I'm attractive in a different kind of way." You've become the anti-Pammy. "I guess so," she laughs. "I've been called 'thinking man's crumpet', which is hysterical. But it's better than being called a bimbo like Pamela Anderson who is only famous for her body-if it is her body. I'd prefer to be known for something a little more worthwhile."

   When Gillian originally auditioned for the role of Scully, she had no idea what to expect and turned up at the producer's office looking scruffy, her hair half way down her back. It was only later that she discovered they were originally looking for a "leggy, blonde, model type" and had to go out on a limb to persuade the studio to give her the role. When she married production designer Clyde Klotz and got pregnant six months into the first series, the producers thought of bringing in a new female lead, but decided the Mulder\Scully chemistry was too good to throw away. Hence the unflattering big coats of the last series. There's a knock at the trailer door. A production assistant tells her she's needed back on set. "Come on," she says grabbing her overcoat. "Let's see what they want".

It's just after lunch and we're playing make-believe (it's interesting to not that she took her place in the food queue outside the catering van behind extras, technicians and assistants without fuss). The sun warms our backs as we sit on a picnic bench outside her trailer. Ostensibly we should be talking about the incredible burgeoning success of the XF, with series three due to start its 24 week run on Sky One on March 5, but getting her to talk about the show isn't proving easy. She eats, drinks, sleeps, breathes XF up to 16 hours a day, five days a week. So we're playing make-believe: pretending for the sake of conversation that we're in a bar. "Our eyes meet," I say. "I smile. You smile back. It's looking good. What happens next?" "I probably wouldn't do anything," she says. "I might make eye contact with somebody, but I would expect the other person to make all the moves." "And if I were to chat you up?" "Do it without me knowing you were doing it." "And how should I treat you?" "And how should I treat you? "Be completely selfless. Be un-egotistical, un egocentric and also not like 'on me' all the time, if you know what I mean? And just let the conversation go where it needs to go. And, umm, ignore me, ha ha! No, don't ignore me, but be your own person and not come up to the bar just because I'm sitting there." If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? "That's certainly not the way-and if you tried that I'd probably throw a drink over you." What about bedroom tactics-do you like being bossed around or does the Scully in you take over? "Both. Initially I like the battle play. I like switching back and forth between being in control and being submissive. It's fun that way, that kind of role-playing, because you never know what to expect. It's more exciting."
   Are you adventurous?
"Uh huh".
   And as my imagination goes into overdrive picturing exactly what 'adventurous' could possibly mean, I decide I need clarification. I mean, Gillian, do you, er, 'break the law' as Paula Yates so memorably put it recently?
   "Yes," she says without a moment's hesitation. And then she burst into fits of laughter: "Ha ha! Yeah. Umm, how did we get into this conversation, ha ha?"

On set. Shooting is in progress. PUSHER, as this episode is called, concerns a brain cancer patient who discovers his tumor has unlocked the latent areas of his mind, lending him heightened extra-sensory powers. In today's big scene, he forces Mulder and Scully to play Russian roulette. The director motions for action and Scully explodes, "You bastard! Damn you! Damn you!" she screams, diving out of the way of a gun shot. The scene calls for Gillian to run full pelt at at wall, wearing a bullet-proof vest. She is called upon to do it time and time again as camera angles and lighting are adjusted. She does this without complaint. Filming The XF is no picnic; the days are long and conditions are on the Spartan side. Consequently there's no room for inflated Hollywood egos, tantrums, mollycoddling or star hand holding. Everybody involved with the XF loves the show. Still, it doesn't look that much like fun. "It can be," she says unconvincingly, after a suitable pause, back at the trailer. It's getting late and the strain is starting to tell. We find out later that shooting continues till after 2:30 am. "It can be fun," she says,"but not always. It's pretty gruelling most of the time, actually." Being cocooned away in Vancouver for most of the year means that the stars of The XF live in a bubble and have little idea of the show's popularity. When talk turns to Gillian's real life she raises an eyebrow. "What life?".