Gillian Anderson Will Play Another Kind of Skeptic: A Journalist

Good heavens, do I ever love Gillian Anderson. Not just for her work as the iconic Agent Scully on a million seasons of The X-Files, either, though obviously that's a big part of it. Did you see her in The House of Mirth? Or making a cameo in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story? Or playing a small role in The Last King of Scotland? No on all counts? Well, take my word for it, then. She's wonderful. My heart leaps within my breast whenever I see her in anything. It could be arrhythmia, but I prefer to call it love.

She's about to star in The X-Files: I Want to Believe, as you know -- but what about after that? Well, Variety brings us word that Anderson's production company has bought the rights to a 2004 biography of Martha Gellhorn (whom you've never heard of, but hang on), and that Anderson will produce a film adaptation and play the leading role.

So who is this Gellhorn person? Only one of the most prolific war correspondents of the 20th century, that's all. She covered just about every global conflict between the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, a career spanning 60 years. She was married to Ernest Hemingway for a while and had countless affairs throughout her life, usually with married men. She was friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. The U.S. Postal Service put her on a stamp earlier this year. Her life has all the makings of a good biopic -- war, romance, tragedy, Roosevelts -- and since Anderson already has plenty of experience playing skeptical women who must deal with difficult men, I say she's a natural. Of course, that could just be the heart palpitations speaking.