Gillian Anderson hid secret same-sex relationship

Gillian Anderson enjoyed a secret same-sex relationship when she was a teenager.

The X Files star has opened up about her love life and revealed one of her first ever relationships was with another female when she was at high school in the USA after moving from the UK where she had spent most of her childhood - and Gillian has admitted she felt she had to hide the romance because it felt "illicit".

She told The Sunday Times newspaper: "One of my first relationships was with an older girl in high school ... But it felt secretive and illicit and wrong, and we had to hide.

When asked if she thought she was gay, the actress replied: "I didn’t, because I’d had a couple of boyfriends. But I definitely felt I didn’t have the language for it."

Gillian went on to reveal she's had other relationships with women but she never felt like any of them was going to become a longterm partnership.

She added: "Even later on, when I had other relationships [with women], I’m not sure I ever thought of them as being potentially for ever."

She also spoke about her struggle to fit in at high school after moving to the US from London when she was 11: "Not only did I not fit in, I didn’t want to fit in. I was a punk in a conservative town. There wasn’t a single other person who had a nose ring and a mohawk.

"I was very self-conscious, with low self-esteem. I had had such high expectations of what my experience was going to be in America, because growing up [in London] I was called a Yank though I sounded like a Brit.

"Then in the States I was embraced as this unique entity with my accent, and I took advantage until that wore off."

It comes after Gillian revealed she's embracing getting older as she approaches her 60th birthday - the 50-year-old star explained she prefers to "ignore" ageing and because it's not something that "needs to be fixed".

She told Grazia magazine: "I ignore it. I behave as I have always behaved – as though I am invincible and never going to die.

"There are so many tools for arresting ageing. And as much as the conversation around ageing has evolved, most of the narrative still centres around it being something we should be afraid of, running from, or something that needs to be fixed.

"We need to be more accepting of ageing, to embrace it – we’ve still got a long way to go."