The studio had a simple instruction: she was supposed to walk several steps behind him.

He was the believer. She was the skeptic. He was paid more, promoted more aggressively and positioned as the natural center of the story.

But audiences kept watching her.

With one raised eyebrow and a quietly devastating stare, the unknown 24-year-old actress transformed what could have been a supporting role into one of television’s most influential female characters.

Hollywood would eventually pay her equally—but only after she fought for it twice.

Long before the tailored suits, FBI badge and controlled voice, she was a teenage punk with colored hair, a shaved head and a talent for frightening the adults around her.

Born in Chicago, she spent part of her childhood in Puerto Rico and then London. When her family returned to the United States and settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, her English accent made her feel like an outsider.

She learned to change her voice depending on her surroundings.

In Britain, she sounded British. In America, she sounded American. The transformation became so natural that some listeners later suspected one accent must be fake.

Both were real.

Her adolescence was far less polished.

She dressed in black, pierced her nose and listened to punk bands. Her classmates voted her “most bizarre girl,” “class clown” and “most likely to be arrested.”

On graduation night, she fulfilled the prophecy.

She and her friends broke into their high school intending to glue the doors shut. She was caught and arrested, although the breaking-and-entering charge was eventually reduced to trespassing. Decades later, she disclosed an even wilder detail: she had been high on methamphetamine during the prank.

The future television icon began adulthood in a jail cell.

Acting gave her rebellion a new direction.

After studying theater in Chicago, she moved to New York, waited tables and found early success onstage. She resisted television and initially had little interest in moving to Los Angeles.

Then she auditioned for a strange science-fiction series about extraterrestrials, government conspiracies and two FBI agents investigating cases that ordinary authorities could not explain.

The studio reportedly wanted someone taller, sexier and more conventionally glamorous.

The show’s creator insisted on her.

Her character was a medical doctor and scientist assigned to evaluate the work of an agent obsessed with the paranormal. She entered the partnership as the rational counterweight to his wild theories.

Something unexpected happened.

She became his equal.

Viewers were fascinated by the tension between the two agents, but the working relationship behind the camera was complicated. She and her co-star shared extraordinary onscreen chemistry while sometimes barely speaking between scenes.

At the 1997 Emmy Awards, she created years of speculation when she celebrated her win by kissing him before kissing the man she was dating. She later explained that the two actors had spent so much time together they were practically married professionally.

There was no secret romance.

There was, however, a very real fight over money.

During the original series, she was paid less than her male co-star for several seasons. She was also reportedly instructed to stand behind him rather than beside him.

She fought until the salaries became equal.

When the series returned years later, the studio initially offered her only half of what it offered him. She was stunned that the same battle had to be fought again.

Once again, she refused.

Once again, she won.

Her private life was just as resistant to easy categories.

She married an assistant art director from the series in a Buddhist ceremony in Hawaii and gave birth to a daughter during the show’s second season. Writers transformed her maternity leave into a mysterious abduction storyline, adding one of the most important chapters to the show’s mythology.

The marriage ended. A second marriage also ended. She later had two sons with another long-term partner.

She has spoken openly about relationships with women, including a secretive relationship with an older girl during her rebellious teenage years. She resisted reducing those experiences to a publicity label, treating them instead as part of a life that had never followed simple rules.

After becoming a global television star, she made another dangerous decision.

She returned to Britain and rebuilt herself as a serious stage actress.

Her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire was raw, physically exhausting and critically acclaimed. She later became the composed detective hunting a serial killer in The Fall, the mysterious psychiatrist in Hannibal and the gloriously candid sex therapist in Sex Education.

Then she disappeared into Margaret Thatcher.

The voice changed. The posture stiffened. The face seemed to harden. Her portrayal of Britain’s first female prime minister in The Crown earned her another Emmy and introduced her to an audience that had never seen her holding an FBI flashlight.

Perhaps that is why she remains so difficult to define.

She can sound American in one interview and English in the next. She can appear glacially controlled while discussing subjects other performers avoid. She has played some of television’s most intelligent women, yet began as the punk teenager everyone expected to end up in trouble.

They were right about the arrest.

They were wrong about everything that came after.

The rebellious girl who broke into her school, fought Hollywood for equal pay and turned a skeptical FBI scientist into a cultural icon is Gillian Anderson.