She added that when she was younger, “there were parts of my brain that thought women were temporary.” Social expectations apparently arrived well before useful terminology, which was efficient if not especially helpful.
Anderson has been linked on and off for about a decade to Peter Morgan, creator of The Crown, although neither has publicly confirmed the relationship.
Her latest comments are not the first time she has discussed dating a girl during high school. In a 2012 interview with Out magazine, Anderson said the relationship lasted “a long time.” She also described dating a punk rock musician with a drug addiction and, later, someone much older than her.
What she said about her teenage years
Looking back at her childhood, Anderson said she has attended therapy with her mother and discussed what boundaries existed while she was growing up.
“I was getting into gay bars and dancing at 12 with a fake ID,” she recalled. Anderson described herself as a strong-willed child and said her mother believed there was little anyone could do to stop her. On that point, she conceded that her mother was correct.
At 15, Anderson began dating a 24-year-old man. The relationship continued for three years. That age difference is striking without any editorial decoration.
In the 2012 interview, Anderson connected her relationships to a broader period of rebellion. She said her appearance, clothing, behavior and choice of partners unsettled people around her because they did not fit what was expected.
“Everything that that kind of anarchistic attitude brings, the inappropriate behavior it leads to, was how I chose to be in the world at that time,” she said.
Her marriages, children and later relationships
Anderson has married twice. She wed Clyde Klotz, an assistant art director on The X-Files, in 1994. They divorced in 1997 and share a daughter, Piper, who is 31.
Her second marriage was to documentary filmmaker Julian Ozanne. They married in 2004 and divorced in 2006.
Anderson later dated businessman Mark Griffiths from 2006 until 2012. They have two sons, Oscar, 19, and Felix, 17.
The actor’s comments do not attach a new label to her sexuality. Instead, they describe how her understanding of relationships developed over time, from secrecy and uncertainty as a teenager to the belief that a life partner could be either a man or a woman. It is a more complicated account than a neat category, which is often how real lives inconveniently work.
