When she was in her mid-twenties, she was cast as the F. The show is partly shot in a purpose-built town of wooden storefronts in a valley about an hour outside Calgary. One day, on the sweltering upstairs floor of the building that represents the Van Ness mining office, Anderson repeated the same few lines for hoursβfirst from a distance, then in closeup. During breaks, she ducked into a small room, hidden behind a frosted-glass window, that was filled with incongruent accoutrements of the twenty-first century: a sleek swivel chair for Anderson to sit in when her hair and makeup were touched up; a place for her to plug in her phone.
While recharging, she proudly showed me several videos of her two sons, fifteen and seventeen, both of whom were in Europe competing in downhill mountain-bike races. She shares custody of them with their father, Mark Griffiths, a British businessman, with whom she was in a relationship in the early two-thousands.
Anderson, who is fifty-five, also has a daughter, twenty-nine, from an earlier marriage. In the course of several conversations in Calgary, and at her home in London, Anderson was funny, frank, and sometimes profane. She was thoughtful without always already having thought things through, and as unguarded as a person can be while remaining conscious of how her every word might be spun in a Daily Mail headline.
Anderson is quick to claim that, in real life, she is far less cerebral than many women she has played. My look, stage left, is intellectual. But I literally could be thinking about the washing. And, for some weird reason, I thought in my head, If the name of this horse has any relation to me whatsoever, I am going to buy it. I know how to act, and how to ride a horse. The elevator opens into a large living room decorated in shades of greige, with floor-to-ceiling windows.
She poured me some, too, but after one sip I left it untouched; she later told me that, after I was gone, she downed my glass as well.
