The X-Files
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Australian Media
July 2000

Fox turns Puppydog

Shedding his TV persona to take on a new role, David Duchovny also lost a little of himself. He told Nui Te Koha about learning to let go.

The truth about David Duchovny is out there but it has less and less to do with The X-Files elusive agent Fox Mulder and much more to do with a lovelorn architect called Bob Rueland.

"Leave your cynicism at the door," Duchovny has requested of the legions of fans he hopes will follow him from their lounge room to the cinema.

In the whimsical romantic comedy Return To Me, Duchovny at last sheds Mulder's shadowy, haunted presence to play Rueland, an open likeable character.

Duchovny, who had to fit in the film between seasons of The X-Files, says he's still amazed that he took on the role so easily. But it helped that the writer/director was his friend Bonnie Hunt, with whom he had appeared in the hit comedy Beethoven.

Bob Rueland is a widower who bears not a shred of Fox Mulder's paranoia and icy self- containment.

"Bob's a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy with traditional values," Duchovny says.

Rueland has thrown himself into work since his wife's death but then he falls in love with a waitress he meets in an Irish-Italian restaurant.

But the waitress, played by Minnie Driver, has a secret: she's had a heart transplant and the donor, she learns, was Bob's wife, Elizabeth (played by Joely Richardson).

Duchovny is the first to admit that when he heard the bare bones of the plot, it did not necessarily sound like the makings of a prime romantic comedy.

But every film is allowed one coincidence and once you get over it, Return To Me is all honey- not to mention a good antidote to The X-Files.

Despite his desire to shed Mulder's skin, Duchovny had to admit that he had borrowed some of his TV character's icy exterior for himself- and letting it go was a big hurdle.

"I saw the film as a fairytale and I thought the only way for it to work is not to wink at the audience and tell them that I'm above the fairytale," he said.

"I couldn't tell them that I'm hipper than this Bob Rueland guy.

"I had to believe, I had to have an innocence and whole heartedly believe that this world existed.

"I was scared that it wasn't hip. There's that fear."

So he decided he was going to take on the most unhip guy in the world, do it well, and make the fairytale real.

Funny thing is, Duchovny ends up rather liking the unhip "idiot".

"In Return To Me, the characters listen to each other. It's not about being cute, it's about being real."

The film is about ordinary people whose lives collide thanks to a well-meaning, matchmaking friend.

Now that The X-Files has made him a rich man, what to do next is now the question that burns brightest on Duchovny's hectic agenda.

Although weary of his X-Files role, the show still consumes his working life and he has little time to give to other projects.

"I just feel like I haven't had time to do anything else," he says.

"If I wanted to work hard, I probably would want to do a romantic comedy. If I wanted a paid vacation, I'd probably do an action film.

"As an actor, it's probably the least fun doing an action film because it's technically painstaking and the stars are really the stunts, the cinematographer and the special effects."

Duchovny is committed to more X-Files episodes, but says this season will be his last. He's certainly given X-Files producers a few cliffhangers to remember.

His annual contract negotiations are watched with great intensity, he had the show moved from Vancouver to Los Angeles to be closer to his wife, actress Tea Leoni, and he's suing 20th Century Fox, the studio behind The X-Files, claiming he lost earnings on repeat and syndicated episodes.

Yet, with all that baggage, Duchovny is still keen to take his box of acting tricks somewhere else.

"I would hope if people were fans of my work, they would be interested in what I was doing and not what they wanted me to do," he said.

"I would never try to tell the Beatles, 'You're going to have to make more songs like Hey Jude and not that crazy stuff you did on the White Album.'"

To date, the critics' consensus on David's work- three films, including The X-Files Movie, and a memorable part on The Larry Sanders Show- is more Britpop than Beatlesque: he's well suited to current pop culture tastes, but how long will it last?

"After the show is over it'll be very different. My schedule will be very different so it's hard to imagine not having to get up every morning and go to work.

"I might enjoy it. I'll miss it at first- like you miss being out of the army, I guess," he says.

"I always remember reading about Ronald Reagan and how when he was president he would ease into the habit of being president because he got a callsheet every morning.

"Somebody would slip his schedule under his door and he'd been an actor his whole life, so it was just perfect.

" He was just acting the president and he's go, 'Okay, I got to be here at 8; here at 9; here at 10.'

"I'm driven to do things that I like to do and, I mean, I just enjoy working, I enjoy creating stuff."

Romantic return to the big screen
David Duchovny is ditching the small screen for as many movie challenges as possible, writes HELEN BARLOW.

DAVID Duchovny, The X-Files heart-throb, was a little tired. The slim, genial actor had been tramping the globe talking himself to a standstill as he publicised his latest and most successful movie to date, the touching, old-fashioned romantic comedy Return To Me.

If the recent success of fellow television-icon-turned-movie-star, George Clooney, is any indication, the effort just might be worth it. Like Clooney, Duchovny is witty and smart, and is constantly the subject of magazine cover stories as a result. It is perhaps no surprise that the two affable, articulate men with a great sense of humour know each other, mostly because they have a mutual good friend in actor-director Bonnie Hunt (Tom Hanks's wife in The Green Mile).

Sitting together on a plane to New York, Clooney had suggested that Duchovny call Hunt regarding a part in her upcoming movie, because it might just be what the actor was after. When he had read Hunt's screenplay Duchovny asked his wife Tea Leoni (Deep Impact) her opinion.

``We have similar takes on movies, but there are instances like this where Tea didn't know Bonnie like I did," Duchovny said. ``She thought the script was really straightforward and simple, but I knew that if you add Bonnie to that, it would be different."

Certainly Return To Me's tale of a widower who finds love again (with Minnie Driver) is sweet and sentimental. But Duchovny was right, in the hands of Hunt (who plays Driver's best friend) the film is touching and hilarious. Still, given his droll FBI agent and his earlier erotic roles, we've never really thought of Duchovny in that way.

``I think we all are sentimental underneath," he said. ``But this is really Bonnie's vision of romance, a world that doesn't have any cultural reference after 1965. I don't think this movie is meant to define a way of life; it's simply meant to be an escape like any good love story."

In person, the casually dressed actor, who turns 40 on August 7, seems like a regular guy. There are hints of movie star charm at times he resembles a young Richard Gere yet he is much too understated.

Would he like to portray more romantic leads? ``I'd like to do everything. I don't think of getting myself to the position where I do the same thing over and over again, I've already learned that lesson."

His lesson, of course, was learned on The X-Files, and he is surprisingly open as to the outcome of his recent lawsuit against 20th Century Fox and the show's creator Chris Carter, for reneging on a deal regarding his share of the television series' profits.

Part of the settlement was that Duchovny would sign on for an eighth X-Files season. ``I didn't really want to do it, but I'm doing it in a diminished capacity," he explained. ``I'm only doing as little as six full episodes and possibly bits in up to 11. So in time that's about three months as opposed to 10, so it's a big difference for me."

You get the impression that if Duchovny set his mind to it, he could succeed at anything. When his Return To Me co-star Driver quipped that he's ``too smart to be an actor", he responded, ``That's a nice way of saying it", as if she meant he was too smart for his own good.

With a masters degree in English Literature from Yale University, the 25-year-old New Yorker was about to complete his doctorate and his thesis, titled Magic And Technology In Contemporary Poetry And Prose, when he fell into acting.

``I was trying to figure out how to write for the stage," Duchovny recalled, ``so I thought maybe I should try to figure out what it is to be an actor, to say words that other people write. Life has a way of happening around you." After smaller parts in Ruby, Chaplin and Beethoven (where he met Hunt) Duchovny starred in the independent movies The Rapture and Kalifornia. But it was as the narrator of women's fantasies on the erotic cable television series Red Shoe Diaries that he first emerged as retiring, sensitive and sexy, that combination which still has women drooling.

He played a troubled doctor in the box office under-performer Playing God, and brought Mulder to cinemas in the 1998 feature, The X-Files: Fight The Future. Now, as he is looking for a varied career in movies, he says he chooses by ``gut instinct. It's crazy, unreliable. I just know that I like that one and I don't like that one. If they tell me to do that one, then I don't care, I do what I want. There's no rhyme or reason really, I wish there was." Having already written and directed an X-Files episode featuring his wife, he wouldn't rule out the possibility of working with Leoni again but not on the series. ``It was sickening in a way how good she was," he beamed. ``She's such a powerful, unique performer."

The only obstacle is their infant daughter, Madelaine. ``It would be nice for the kid on the one hand, but then it would be difficult because we'd both be working at the same time. We're thinking of doing on and off deals." The ever-bubbly Leoni seems like the polar opposite to the more introspective Duchovny. One of the most devoted of Hollywood couples, their differences obviously make for a healthy relationship.

``She's not bubbly all the time, she can be a pain in the ass," he protested. ``But she's definitely an optimistic, capable, active person. I love her capability.

``She's just able to do stuff. She tackles problems. She's not passive." Is Duchovny passive? ``I can be. I'm more in my head than Tea is. She's more in the world. But then we switch roles. Sometimes I'll be totally taking charge and she'll get passive. But that's another movie."

Return To Me opens on Thursday.

Wily as a FOX
FOX on the run

"It's unnatural, I know, but in a weekly series you can not have things change the way they would in real life. You can not have the kind of resolution you want in real life. I thing it's best if Mulder and Scully just keep teasing the viewers the way they do." ~ David Duchovny

David Duchovny can see the end of Fox Mulder, despite harboring a kind of brotherly love for him, writes Robert Fidgeon

Three months ago, the truth was out there and X-Files fans didn't like it one bit. The show's star, David Duchovny, wasn't going to sign for another season. The search was on for a new co-star for Gillian Anderson. The major problem appeared to be Duchovny's unresolved 10-month lawsuit against Fox Television. Duchovny alleged Fox had sold X-Files rerun rights to its off-shoot cable company FX at a reduced price, rather than placing the show on the open market. The sale, he said, had cheated him out of $25 million in shared profits.

On May 16, Fox announced it was going ahead with an eight season, with or without Duchovny. Twenty-four hours later, Duchovny had signed for the eighth year, but his return came at a hefty price.

He would appear in only 11 of the 22 episodes, for which he would receive a reported $7.7 million, plus an additional $20 million as settlement of his lawsuit. But the X-Files fans were happy. Half a season with Fox Mulder was better than none. Duchovny admits it was a stressful time.

"However, now that things are settled, I'm enjoying being back at work," he says.

Tonight's episode of X-Files is very much an all-Duchovny family affair. Titled Hollywood AD, it was written and directed by Duchovny, who, of course, also stars in it. Guest-starring is his wife, former Naked Truth star Tea Leoni. Married for three years and the father of 13-month-old Madelaine, Duchovny says he had reservations about appearing with Leoni. "Looking at Tea objectively as an actress, I wanted to work with her above anyone else," he says. "But when you're married, I think you really have to be careful if you're going to work together, but in this case it turned our fine."

Marriage and fatherhood has changed his priorities, he says. Things that once bothered him regarding his career no longer seem so important. "You realise they are pretty much petty things - ego-driven things," he says. "With marriage and a child, while you don't become completely unselfish, you do start living for another generation, and that's a wonderful thing."

But while his off-screen love-life motors along just fine, his on-screen relationship with the other woman in his life remains on a slow burn. At least, this season, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully got to share a kiss, albeit a chaste "happy new year" brushing of the lips. But many X-Files fans want more. Duchovny, however, remains unconvinced. "I'm really not sure," he says. "Mulder and Scully share a deep bond, but I'm not sure about romance."

"The interesting thing about everybody's interest in the relationship between Mulder and Scully is that they want some kind of resolution to it. But when you look at the show, each week something happens to Mulder and/or Scully that is completely life-changing, yet we come back the next week a if nothing had happened."

"It's unnatural, I know, but in a weekly series you can not have things change the way they would in real life. You can not have the kind of resolution you want in real life. I thing it's best if Mulder and Scully just keep teasing the viewers the way they do."

Duchovny's parents divorced when he was 11. When he was 27, he quit Yale University and his English Literature PhD studies to pursue acting. After making his movie debut in Working Girl with Melanie Griffiths in 1988, he attracted attention as the transvestite detective in TV's Twin Peaks before landing his first lead role, as a telephone hustler in Julia Has Two Lovers (1991). He was cast as X-Files' Special Agent Fox Mulder in 1993.

Since then, Duchovny has spent seven years investigating everything from UFO sightings and alien abductions to voodoo, demonic possession and witchcraft. There's little doubt the eight season will be his last. However, he hasn't ruled out continuing as Mulder in any future X-Files movies. Truth is, he has come to like the guy.

"After seven years playing Mulder, you feel proprietary towards the character," he says. "I feel like I want to take care of him and make sure he's not misrepresented." "I've helped create him and have lived with him for seven years, so there's a part of me that always wants to be around him to see that he's taken care of."

The X-Files, Channel Ten, tonight, 8.30pm

FACT File
David Duchovny
Born: August 7, 1960, in New York
Family: Father Amran, a publicist; mother Margaret, a teacher; elder brother Daniel and younger sister Laurie.
Education: Princeton University, New Jersey; BA English Literature, 1982 Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; MA English Literature, 1987. Worked towards Phd but did not complete thesis. Married actor Tea Leoni in New York on May 6, 1997; daughter Madelaine West Duchovny born April 24, 1999

No 'X' please, I'm skittish

Long-running sci-fi shocker The X-files is snowballing fast to a huge season ending finale. If you though the kiss earlier this year catapulted Fox Mulder and Dana Scully to overdue new heights of intimacy, then so too are a series of outrageously cheeky photographic poses by the two sexy stars.

Now the latest Hollywood buzz is that the X-Files will bow out with a pregnant Scully (Gillian Anderson). But to whom, or what? Mulder perhaps (they did share the same bed a few episodes back)- or an insidious alien?

The motherhood bombshell is expected to be dropped on August 16. For now, The X-Files embarks on a totally new twist when David Duchovny himself-aka Fox Mulder- takes the writer/director's chair in a show starring his real life wife, Tea Leoni.

Leoni plays a Hollywood version of Scully, and Duchovny's good friend, Garry Shandling, plays Mulder. After seven seasons, Duchovny may not find much to mine creatively in FBI conspiracy theorist Mulder and he may also be skittish about returning-even if it is for fewer episodes. But the TV series does still offer its star a training ground for what he really wants to do: direct. Tonight's episode is his second chance at writing and directing for The X-Files.

The hour, titled Hopllywood AD, combines zombies and serious discussion of resurrection themes, religious fanatics and film making zealot Ed Wood, yet another tirade by Mulder's boss, and some plentiful self-deprecating humor. In essence, it has all, including Minnie Driver, Duchovny's co-star in the film Return To Me, and X-Files creator Chris Carter in brief guest roles.

"Directing the show is great training for me, " says Duchovny, who wants to try feature film directing. "It's an enticement to me and, having dome two episodes, I at least feel I know what it may take to write or direct a movie."

Duchovny, who yearns for a movie career, recently committed to an eighth but final season of The X-Files- for $US 800,000 (A1.379 million) an episode. The deal will cut his workload to just 11 of next year's episodes. Mulder reportedly will be abducted by aliens in this season's finale and a pregnant Scully will spend much of the eight season searching for him with a new partner. Tonight's show is a kind of spoof on the false realities of show business. A film producer shadows Mulder and Scully to research a studio film, starring Leoni (Deep Impact) and Shandling (The Larry Sanders Show), that winds up being based on an X-file case.

Duchovny says he wants to explore "realness and fakeness on all different levels. You've got a movie of the real case, and you've got the real case, but the real case is in a TV show."

How the Hollywood version toys with the "real case" and simplifies it hits home with Duchovny."What it boils down to is you have three-dimensional people, but when you try to tell a story about them or tell a TV story, they become less dimensional," he says.

"What bothers me is the kind of simplification of myself through the character of Mulder."

In the TV show, Mulder and Scully are horrified at the way they are portrayed in cinema by Shandling and Leoni. Duchovny's- and Mulder's- dry wit is apparent throughout the script. Describing Scully, the producer whispers into a tape recorder: "She, Jodie Foster's foster child on a payless budget." ON Mulder: " He's like a Jehovah's Witness meets Harrison Ford's Witness."

And later, as Mulder and Scully blunder about: "I like the way you guys work. No warrants. No research. You're like studio executives with guns."

Mulder and Scully investigate a bombing in a church crypt, where they find forged religious texts and a freshly deceased body among the bones. They encounter a dogmatic cardinal, a 1960s radical who believes he's Jesus, and pottery fragments that purportedly captured Christ's voice when he ordered Lazarus to rise from the dead. Framing the case, at the episode's beginning and end, is a screening of the movie based on the case, with Mulder and Scully in the audience alongside celebrities, who include Carter and Driver.

As Mulder, Shandling spews bad Hollywood action-flick dialogue at a fiery pontiff and his army of resurrected zombies. The Hollywood Mulder and Scully even tumble into a coffin and embrace passionately.

"After we shot that, I went home that night and thought, that might have been weird, directing my wife kissing a friend of mine in a coffin," Duchovny says.

There's amusing interplay between the "real" Mulder and the Hollywood versions, including a twist on the apparent come-ons that Duchovny, playing himself, made to Shandling's character on The Larry Sanders Show. For all the episode's humor, Duchovny says he views it as one of the weightiest X-Files. "I see it as funny, but at the heart of the case is a much more serious discussion of life than ever takes place on our show," Duchovny says. " This is probably darker than just about any show we've ever done, if you think about it."

The episode effectively works in scenes from cult director Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space, which Mulder views for the 42nd time.

"It's like a really bad X-Files," Duchovny says, " but told with the best of a storyteller's heart from a guy who was totally committed to what he was doing."

Inset: Scully's New Sidekick

With the news that David Duchovny is expected to leave The X-Files shortly after the new season begins and resurface sometime around the 13th episode, rumours are flying about who will step into his shoes. Creator and executive producer Chris Carter auditioned four actors to play a sidekick to Dana Scully on the Fox hit, the four included Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead fame, LA Bamba's Lou Diamond Phillips and Hart Bochner (Anywhere But Here), says The Hollywood Reporter.

The job has reportedly gone to Terminator 2 cyborg villain Robert Patrick, playing FBI agent John Doggett, who must help find Mulder.

By David Germaine and Simon Yeaman

That's not Scully, that's my wife!
By Steve Hardy

David Duchovny directs his wife Tea Leoni in a very special episode of The X Files.

ACTOR and mother Tea Leoni is getting back to work the easy way - by combining work and family. Tea (right) appears in this week's special episode of Network Ten's The X Files, directed by her husband David Duchovny!

In the episode, titled "Holloywood A.D.", Tea plays Gillian Anderson's character Dana Scully, while David's character Fox Mulder is played by his friend, comedian Garry Shandling (facing page, bottom, far left, with Tea, fellow guest star Wayne Federman, David and Gillian). David even directs a love scene between Tea and Garry!

"Hollywood's a sick place, isn't it?" he says. "Actually, I was more worried about getting the shot right than anything else."

Last year, Tea became a mum for the first time when she gave birth to daughter Madelaine West. To complete the perfect picture, the family shares a $US2.9 million home in L.A's exclusive beachside Malibu which features four bedrooms, a pool, gardens and a stairway to the beach. She admits that it's such a haven they need no other place to hoilday.

The 34-year-old star and her 39-year-old husband are a great match. They met about eight years ago on a spilt interview for an appearance on US TV night-time institution The Tonight Show.

"If you're not quite famous enough to be asked to appear on the show the have to go to lunch and show the producers that you've got something," Tea explains.

"Normally, you do it one-on-one with the producers from the show, but they asked if I wouldn't mind splitting it with another actor. I said, 'Yeah, that's OK, no problem'. I asked who it was and they told me David. "It was one of the worst lunches of my life, but not because of David," she continues. "It was the producers and how uncomfortable they made me...I wouldn't recognize them now, and I wouldn't care."

As she and David left lunch that day, Tea didn't realize that it would be almost five years before she set eyes on him again. "this is where the story gets a whole less romantic." she laughs. "We had same agent, and she suggested that David and I had a great deal in common and maybe would enjoy a date together. And we did. Isn't that awful?" Their agent-turned-matchmaker obviously knew her clients well. Both were born and raised in New York, attended prestigious schools and are heavily into education.

"We're cerebral characters trapped inside wild, creatively twisted souls," Tea says.

She and David began eating at romantic restaurants and making out to her favorite song - Ready For Love by Bad Company.

"Have you heard it? You'll see!" she recommends to others who might be looking for similar romantic vibes.

"David was accused [by the tabloids] of being a sex addict at the time, which I always found very exciting!"

After a four-month courtship, they were married on May 6, 1997 in a secret 20-mintue marriage and Tea's second - she was married from 1992 to 1995 to Los Angeles advertising executive Neil Tardio.

Following an initial burst of publicity from the world press, interest in the newlyweds quickly quieted down. "That was a delightful time, even though David and I were working very hard," Tea remembers. "The press left us alone...and then they came back. "I had lots of false-pregnancy stories.

According to one magazine, I must have been pregnant for 12 months! There was also the 'stalkerazzi', so when I was actually pregnant I decided to be protective of my space and privacy."

Tea's appearance in The X Files marks her return to an acting career that includes roles in the films A League Of Their Own, Wyatt Earp, Bad Boys, Flirting With Disaster and Deep Impact.

However, she remains best known for her comedy roles such as The Naked Truth, the 1990's sitcom that shot her to fame.

"David has a great sense of humor, too," she adds. "Humor is so important." Being faithful to each other also has it's place. "Monogamy is a powerful thing." Tea believes. "That intimacy and trust means so much, and really keeps the spark alive".

"David and I once tried making love in a sauna, and I was shaking and dehydrated afterwards. We were ill for about 24 hours. How stupid is that?"

Hollywood AD

"I don't know. I mean, I don't want to, but I could loose my leg and all of a sudden nobody else would want me to act in their film. I'm not going to say never any more. We'll see."~ David Duchovny on a Ninth Season .

In his latest movie, David Duchovny has abandoned sci-fi for a bit of old fashioned romance.

David Duchovny, the X-Files heart-throb, is a little tired. The slim, genial actor has been tramping the globe talking himself to a standstill as he publicizes his latest and most successful movie to date, the touching, old-fashioned, romantic comedy, Return To Me.

But if the recent success of fellow television-star-turned-movie-star George Clooney is any indication, the effort just might be worth it.

Like Clooney, Duchovny is a journalist's darling--- witty and smart and constantly the subject of magazine cover stories as a result. It is perhaps no surprise that these two affable, articulate men with great senses of humour (though Duchovny's is as dry as a bone) know each other, mostly because they have a mutual good friend in the lovable comedian/actor-turned-director, Bonnie Hunt.

They were sitting together on a plane headed for New York when Clooney suggested that Duchovny call Hunt regarding a part in her upcoming movie, because it might be just what the actor was after. After reading Hunt's screenplay Duchovny asked the opinion of his wife, actor Tea Leoni.

"We have similar takes on movies, but there are instances like this where Tea didn't know Bonnie like I did," Duchovny says in Paris. "She thought the script was really straightforward and simple, but I knew that if you added Bonnie to that, it would be different."

Certainly Return To Me's tale of a widower who finds love again (with Minnie Driver) is sweet and sentimental. But Duchovny was right--- in the hands of Hunt (who also plays Driver's best friend) the film is touching and hilarious. Still, given his droll FBI agent and his earlier erotic roles, it's difficult to think of Duchovny as the sweet and sentimental type.

"I think we are all sentimental underneath," he says, letting loose his distinctive straight-at-you stare. "But this is really Bonnie's vision of romance, a world that doesn't have any cultural reference after 1965. I don't think this movie is meant to define a way of life, it's simply meant to be an escape, like any good love story.

"It's not about what happens to Grace and Bob after they sleep together, it's about what it takes to get there. After they sleep together, that's when reality sets in. We're not interested in showing you that."

In many ways, he says, RTM is not so far from X-Files territory. "In The X-Files you have to create a mundane reality out of something that is extraordinarily implausible. And RTM is similar in that you have to work up a belief.

"They're both fairytales, so the actor has to have a conviction. He can't be winking at the audience and saying, 'I don't believe this, this is all stupid, there's no such thing as somebody getting my dead wife's heart and then me falling in love with her.' You know it doesn't exist. So you have to create the world for the audience so they don't question it themselves, so the don't sit there going, 'I don't buy this'."

In person the casually dressed actor, who turns 40 on Monday, seems like a regular guy. There are glimpses of movie star charm--- at times he resembles a young Richard Gere--- yet overall he is much too understated. His dry wit probably has a lot to do with his half-Scottish ancestry. It was only last month that he was donning a kilt for his film's Edinburgh UK premiere.

Would he like to do more romantic leads? "I'd like to do everything," he says. "I don't think of getting myself to the position where I can do the same thing over and over again, I've already learned that lesson."

His lesson of course was learned on The X-Files and the subsequent recent lawsuit against 20th Century Fox and the show's creator Chris Carter, for reneging on a deal regarding his share of the television series' profits. Part of the settlement was that Duchovny would sign on for an eighth X-Files season.

"I didn't really want to do it," he explains, "but I'm doing it in a diminished capacity. I'm only doing as little as six full episodes and possibly bits in up to 11. So in time that's about three months as opposed to ten, so it's a big difference to me.

"At this point it's just a money-making enterprise. It's not really the time for bare challenges or inspirations--- they haven't come about for a number of years. It's just time to move on. I just wish we all would."

Will there be a second film? "I don't know, I imagine (there will be). The first one made money, so they'll probably make another one. They keep going till they don't make money, that's how it goes."

Will there be a ninth season? "I don't know. I mean, I don't want to, but I could loose my leg and all of a sudden nobody else would want me to act in their film. I'm not going to say never any more. We'll see."

You get the impression that if Duchovny set his mind to it, he could succeed at anything. When his co-star Minnie Driver quipped that he was "too smart to be an actor", he responded, "That's a nice was of saying it", as if she meant he was too smart for his own good.

But smart he is, with a Masters degree in English Literature from Yale University. The then 25 year-old New Yorker was about to complete his doctorate and his thesis ( titled Magic and Technology in Contemporary Poetry and Prose) when he fell into acting.

"I was trying to figure out how to write for the stage," Duchovny recalls, "so I thought maybe I should try to figure out what it is to be an actor, to say words that other people write. Life has way of happening around you."

After smaller parts in Ruby, Chaplin and Beethoven ( where he met Hunt) Duchovny starred in the independent movies The Rapture and Kalifornia. But it was as the narrator of women's fantasies on the erotic cable television series Red Shoe Diaries ( from the creator of 9 1/2 Weeks) that he first emerged as retiring, sensitive and sexy--- a combination that still has women drooling.

He played a troubled doctor in the box office underperformer, Playing God, and brought Mulder to cinemas in the 1998 feature, The X-Files: Fight The Future.

Now, as he is looking for a varied career in movies, he says he chooses by "gut instinct. It's crazy, unreliable. I just know that I like that one and I don't like that one. If they tell me to do that one then I don't care, I do what I want. There's no rhyme or reason really. I wish there was."

Having already written and directed an X-Files episode featuring his wife, Duchovny wouldn't rule out the possibility of working with Leoni again---but not on the series.

"It was sickening, in a way, how good she was," he beams. "She's such a powerful, unique performer."

The only obstacle is their infant daughter, Madeleine. "It would be nice for the kid on the one hand, but then it would be difficult because we'd both be working at the same time. We're think of doing on-and-off deals."

The ever bubbly Leoni seems to be the polar opposite of the more introspective Duchovny, who at least, thanks to acting, has overcome the painful shyness he endured through his childhood. One of the most devoted of Hollywood couples, their differences obviously make for a healthy relationship.

"She's not bubbly all the time, she can be a pain in the ass," he protests, at the intimation that he is not so frivolous. "But she's definitely an optimistic, capable, active person. I love her capability. She's just able to do stuff. She tackles problems. She's not passive."

Is Duchovny passive? "Ah, ah," he pauses. "I can be. I'm more in my head that Tea is. She's more in the world. But then we switch roles. Sometimes I'll be totally taking charge and she'll get passive.

"But that's another movie........."

Crippling shyness ruined David's first big romance

Female fans worldwide sigh over his sexy smile and buffed body- and before his marriage to TV star Tea Leoni, he was dating some of Hollywood's hottest babes.

But, says The X-Files heart-throb David Duchovny, deep down he's one of the shyest guys in showbiz.

In fact, he says he was so shy it took him ages to pluck up the courage to ask Tea out.

"We spoke on the phone for weeks before I was able to ask her for a date," David, 39, confesses.

But that's nothing compared with the shyness that overwhelmed him years ago, after he finally managed to ask the girl of his dreams to a high school dance.

David says it was the most embarrassing night of his life.

"I was a nervous nerd and I went to an all-boy's school," he says. " Anyway, we set up the date but, when I set eyes on her at the dance, I thought she was so pretty that I got completely tongue- tied.

"I was so shy I couldn't pluck up the courage to ask her to dance or even have a conversation with her."

The next day the girl called him. "She was angry and said, 'We're history! I suggest you speak to the girl you're taking out!','' he recalls.

Even at home, David's shyness was an issue.

"My older brother, Daniel used to tell everyone that I was retarded," David reveals. "He wasn't being mean- he said it to explain why I was so quiet around adults."

Retarded he certainly wasn't. Born in Manhattan, on August 7, 1961, to Russian-born Amram, a publicist for the American Jewish committee, and Scottish-born Margaret, a teacher, David won a scholarship to New York's posh Collegiate Prep School, where his classmates included John F. Kennedy Jnr.

But, at the age of 11, his world came crashing down when his parents divorced. He says the split caused him to put a lid on his emotions, making him even more reserved.

David was an ace student and athlete and, after starting at Princeton, represented the college in basketball and baseball.

After graduating from Princeton, David opted for an academic life, going to Yale for a master's in English Literature, then studying for a PhD. But, while working on his thesis, he discovered acting and began drama lessons.

"With acting, I realised that I could have all these emotions, and not suffer from them," he confesses.

"I'm still very shy at heart today but, sometimes, my shyness is interpreted as arrogance- and that hurts."

From drama lessons, he went on to small theatre roles, then a beer ad, followed by parts in 1988's Working Girl and the arty New Year's Day.

Finally, David chucked in his studies and moved to Los Angeles. He scored some offbeat roles in small films, and the part of a cross-dressing agent in TV's Twin Peaks.

Then, in 1993, he auditioned for the role that changed his life- special agent Fox Mulder. The X-Files became a worldwide hit.

Seven years on, it's still a top rater, and David has just joined co-star Gillian Anderson, alias Dana Scully, in signing for another season.

While he's shy of revealing how much the deal is worth, reports say it's around $20 million- not bad considering he'll appear in 11 of the scheduled 22 episodes!

David admits he's keen on pursuing the big screen- especially as the first X-Files movie, in 1998, made more than $200 million worldwide.

Despite a few flops, such as Playing God and The Rapture, he's hoping his latest venture, the romantic comedy Return To Me, will be a smash hit.

In the film, screening here in August, David plays architect Bob Rueland whose wife's heart is used in a transplant after she is killed in a car crash. As Bob tries to get his life back on track, he meets a waitress, played by Minnie Driver, who's just had a heart transplant. The romance doesn't run smoothly.

"The movie has a great deal of woe but it also makes people feel good and there aren't many films like that," David says. " And it's the first romantic comedy in 10 years that doesn't star Julia Roberts!"

Until he wed Tea in 1997, David was known as a real ladies' man, dating actresses such as Perrey Reeves, Sheryl Lee and Winona Ryder.

But he says marriage and, more recently, the birth of the couple's daughter, Madelaine West, now one, have shown him what's important in life.

"Your priorities are different. Tea worries about day- to- day things, such as whether Madelaine has eaten enough, or why she's crying or if she's getting enough sleep.

"I worry about whether she's a teenager, there'll be enough fresh water on the planet for her."

However, his image as a sensitive new-age guy aside, David admits he doesn't change his baby daughter's nappies.

"Tea does all that, " he grins!

By Rebecca Gideon and Elizabeth Kelly

David Duchovny leaves Mulder behind in Return to Me

Agent Mulder will soon be no more. This could be a blessing for actor David Duchony; apart froma long run in the low-budget soft-porn series The Red Shoe Diaries, he's known almost solely for his role as the laconic FBI agent who believes in the supernatural and the little green men who kidnapped his sister.

But what a role: there are hundreds of obsessive fan-sites devoted to him. One is the "David Duchovny Red Speedo poems page". One entry reads: "Look at Mulder/Almost naked/Little red Speedo/Oh I wish he'd take it." The upcoming eighth series of The X-Files seems set to be his last: he was tempted back for 11 of the 22 episodes at a reported fee of $US20 million, even after suing Fox for lost income. About halfway through the series he'll be kidnapped himself, when Dana Scully teams up with her new partner in a quest to find him.

(He gave this interview before agreeing to the eighth series, leaving the following quote which may come back to haunt him: "So if I was a lazy person just interested in making tons and tons of money I could do it." )

And now hes in a new film, Reurn To Me, opposite Minnie Driver. He plays a recently widowed architect who's trying to come to terms with his wife's death. He meets Driver who has just received his dead wife's heart in a transplant. Neither know this: they fall in love.

Sounds bit ridiculous? Don't tell Duchovny. "What attracted and scared me about this script is how I hadn't read a script like this maybe ever where it was just so straight-ahead sentimental and magical in that way. Here I am, in this hip TV show, and I'm supposed to ne this hip guy and I'm gonna go out there and act in a fairytale. These unbelievable things happen to people and the react to them sincerely, without cynicism and without the knowledge that they should be hipper than to believe in such things. That's the hippest thing I could do."

People still confused Duchovny with Mulder. "That's mostly on the street," he says, "but they're a bunch of dumb assess." Duchovny has a deserved reputation for being droll and cutting.

"Sometimes they confuse me with Scully -- They'll say, 'Yeah, big fan of the show.' Oh really? Then you should know that my character is not the woman."

Respect is a big issue for him - he always makes sure he's prepared for a role, and was pleased to find that Driver shares these values. "How else are you going to live your life if you're not going to respect your job and respect the people you work with? You're actuaklly going to show up with such lack of respect that you're going to inconvenience others while you get yourself ready. I don't like it."

While Gillian Anderson has recently given up smoking, Duchovny doesn't need to worry about his health - he's just completed a mini-triathlon. "It was do-able," he shrugs. "I could do it without training because I couldn't train for it really, so I just kind of did it."

Modest man. Still, he doesn't reveal all. He's just been tattooed on his ankle with his daughter's name. And a heart? "No." A skull? "No, you're not gonna guess it. It's not gonna work."

The truth is still out there.