Gillian Anderson has revealed she was using crystal meth the night police arrested her for breaking into her school as a teenager.
The actress, 58, opened up about the 1986 run-in with authorities during an appearance on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, recalling a period when she was immersed in a “punk phase” in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Anderson said she and others entered City High-Middle School in the middle of the night with a mischievous plan.
“We were trying to glue the locks shut so that people couldn’t go in the next day,” she said.
A security guard caught on, sending Anderson running through downtown Grand Rapids in thin-soled boots before things took a left turn.
“I stepped on a nail and that’s what slowed me down,” she continued. “Were it not for the nail I would’ve outsmarted him and I would not have been arrested.”
Anderson said she was “doing a little crystal meth at the time” and somehow convinced authorities to pursue trespassing rather than breaking and entering.
Meanwhile, her older boyfriend did not stay by her side.
“He went back to his apartment and smoked some more dope and just kept drinking the night away while I was in prison,” Anderson recalled. She later said her punishment included community service cleaning a YMCA, which she called “entirely humiliating.”
