Gillian Anderson was arrested for breaking into school while on crystal meth
Gillian Anderson (Getty Images)
Gillian Anderson has opened up about one of the more chaotic chapters of her teenage years, highlighting a night that involved crystal meth, a late-night high school break-in and a particularly unfortunate encounter with a nail.
The X-Files star recalled the incident during a 17 August appearance on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, explaining that she and her friends broke into her high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the middle of the night as part of a prank.
Their plan? Glue the locks shut so nobody could get into the school the following day.
Anderson admitted she was caught while trying to escape. “I had pointy buckle boots on, and they had a very thin sole,” she explained. “So when the security guard was chasing me through downtown Grand Rapids, I stepped on a nail. That’s what slowed me down.”
“Were it not for the nail, I would have outsmarted him and I would not have been arrested,” she added.
‘That was kind of me at the time’
Anderson also said she had been “doing a little crystal meth” at the time.
According to the actor, the drug left her in a good enough mood to successfully convince police to reduce the charge she was facing.
“I managed to talk them out of breaking and entering and just into trespassing,” she said.
“Yeah… that was kind of me at the time,” she told O’Brien when he described the prank as “aggressive”.
Anderson said her high school classmates had previously voted her “Most Likely To Be Arrested”, during what she described as her teenage “punk” phase.
She also recalled that the boyfriend she was with that night was considerably older than she was. After she was arrested, she said he went back to his apartment, continued smoking and drinking, while Anderson spent the night in jail.
“With a nail through your foot, whacked out on crystal meth,” O’Brien quipped.
Anderson went on to graduate from City High School in 1986 before studying theatre at DePaul University in Chicago and eventually moving to New York to pursue acting. She would later land the role that made her a household name, FBI agent Dana Scully on The X-Files.
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