Interview, The Herald (UK)
Posted at 6:26 AM (PST) on Friday, November 14, 2003

'Aids is not a fashionable cause any more'
By Mark Smith
The Herald

For a long time - almost 10 years, in fact - Gillian Anderson searched for a truth we were told was out there. As Dana Scully in the paranoid fantasy series The X-Files, she looked for it among plagues of grasshoppers, shapeshifting aliens, and cigarette-smoking men. She has been looking for truth in real life, too, and she found it when she was least expecting to.

Travelling through South Africa in May last year, Anderson visited Soweto, the township where Aids demands a daily sacrifice. There she met a boy who was living in unbelievable poverty. Every day, despite the appalling conditions, he would get up, go to school, and practise on the violin for hours and hours. There was a joy in his music, even if there wasn't anywhere else, and in subtle ways the boy began to change the landscape for himself and his famous visitor.

Keep reading...