The mystery Hollywood star who famed restauranteur Keith McNally had an affair with is none other than award-winning actress Gillian Anderson, according to Page Six. The Balthazar owner reveals in his 2025 memoir I Regret Almost Everything, that he first met the star, who he only refers to as ‘X’ in his book, when she contacted him through a mutual friend after reading a 1998 Vanity Fair story about him. Despite “her starring in a TV show watched by millions,” McNally did not know who she was. After several phone calls, he says ‘X’ visited him in New York and that they attended the Broadway play Art, which narrowed down the timeline to between Feb. 12, 1998 and Aug. 8, 1999. McNally stated that the New York Post published a photo of the pair, however the paper said that he may have been confusing the publication with the Daily News, which indeed did publish a picture of him out on the town with Anderson. McNally was involved in a complicated relationship with Alina Johnson at the time, who he married in 1999, had two children with, but divorced in 2018. He admitted that his fling with Anderson made him miss Johnson. “I called [X] and told her point-blank that though I liked her a lot, I wanted our relationship to be simply platonic. Without missing a beat, she screamed ‘F--k off!’ and hung up the phone,” McNally wrote. His attempt to mask Anderson’s identity by simply referring to her as ‘X’ appears to be a feeble attempt given that she is perhaps best known for starring in the hit show, The X Files, for which she won an Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series. The Daily Beast has reached out to McNally and Anderson for comment.
Read it at Page Six
