Fox on the run: David Duchovny reveals why he will never ditch his
screen alter ego, FBI Agent...The Daily Record
by John Millar

David Duchovny reveals why he will never ditch the X-Files

Every week, he's on the verge of proving to a sceptical world that, yes, aliens really do exist. Every week, he falls at the last hurdle.

It's enough to drive anyone mad ... and David Duchovny is no exception.

It's an open secret that playing The X Files' agent Fox Mulder is driving him round the bend and he no longer tries to hide it.

When we met in a plush suite at London's Dorchester Hotel, he admitted: "I'm bored. I have been bored for a couple of years.

Not quite bored enough to turn his back on the sensationally-successful series which has made his one of the best- known faces on this - and who knows, maybe any other - planet.

In fact, he has just signed a dollars 4million deal, committing him to another 40 episodes.

He said: "The situation is no reflection on The X Files, the writers or the actors I work with. It's just human nature.

"But I'm professional and I've been trying to find things that are exciting and interesting for me as an actor to keep playing."

The 38-year-old has starred as the alien-hunting FBI agent Mulder in five series of The X Files. His sci- fi escapades with co-star Gillian Anderson have attracted 25 million viewers in the USA and are now seen in more than 60 countries.

A significant diversion from the same old TV routine has been The X Files movie, which opens today.

It has already taken more than dollars 80million at the US box office and given Duchovny a taste of the big- screen success which has so far eluded him.

He's very proud of the film, which is why he's jetted round Europe to promote it. Clad in Italian designer chic, the gangly actor is the epitome of style.

He doesn't seem the type to take any unnecessary risks as a big-screen version of the show most certainly was. The history of cinema adaptations of television series has never been one to inspire confidence, even before the recent horrors of Lost In Space and The Avengers.

BUT Duchovny insisted: "I never thought of the film as a gamble. We do a good TV show, so there was no reason why we shouldn't do a good job with the movie.

"Now, looking back, there were a lot of gambles. I'm glad I didn't think of them before. The biggest gamble was making a film which was an extension of the series and pleased fans, but which was also completely understandable to someone who'd never seen the show.

"There was also the risk that if the movie bombed, the TV series would be tarnished in some way."

Filming of the movie was carried out with extraordinary secrecy, a policy Duchovny agrees with. But he insisted that keeping the plot hush- hush was common sense, not paranoia.

He added: "We were making a thriller, so it's better if people don't know the ending. Our wanting to keep it a secret was just to make it a better movie."

On the big screen, the simmering attraction between Duchovny's Mulder and Anderson's Scully finally culminates in a kiss. But Duchovny says there can be no romance between the agents in the television series.

He said: "Romance wouldn't kill The X Files, but it would change it. I don't think our writers are particularly interested in writing relationship stuff. If they wanted that, they'd be working on Ally McBeal.

"If I had a choice, I'd say don't have Mulder and Scully together because it takes the focus away from the quest. There are so many shows about a man and a woman. Ours is the only one about a guy trying to find aliens. That's the show's strength, so let's stay with that."

The sexiest scene in the film, as far as David Duchovny's army of fans is concerned, has been left on the cutting-room floor. It's the moment when the star's bare backside was revealed during a sequence when Fox Mulder escapes from a hospital room.

He laughed: "I thought it was a good idea to show my bare ass because it was totally gratuitous.

"I hate it when actors say they appeared in a nude scene because it was necessary. A nude scene is never necessary. You never need to see a couple making love in a film.

"You can have a kiss, then the guy is pulling on his boots or the train goes through a tunnel and you know what's happened. But actors and directors like to tell you nude scenes are necessary. I think they are fine. I'll look at anybody naked. But they are gratuitous scenes."

STRAIGHT talking is very much the style of David Duchovny, who quit a PhD at Yale University to concentrate on acting.

But his philosophy of being direct landed the star in trouble when he made it clear he wanted the bosses of The X Files to re- locate the TV series from Vancouver to Los Angeles.

His reason was simple. He had married Tea Leoni, star of the sci-fi disaster movie Deep Impact, and for 10 months of their first year of marriage, he was in the Canadian city while she was home in California.

But Duchovny's campaign resulted in him being transformed from Vancouver's favourite adopted son to an object of hate. The home he had rented in Vancouver was pelted with eggs by angry Canadians who felt Duchovny had let them, and their city, down.

He said: "I would have been angry if people had thrown eggs at my house because they were anti- Jewish. But this just saddened me.

"People whom I thought had embraced me had become unreasonable because of stupid things that had been said about me."

It had been claimed Duchovny insisted on moving The X Files to the sunshine of California because he couldn't stand Vancouver's wet weather.

"I was told I was selfish and infantile. I was being portrayed as an actor who was whimsical and didn't like the Vancouver rain.

"The image was created of a pampered actor who didn't want his hair messed up by the rain. Think about it. I'm a guy from New York who was raised in New York, a city that has lousy weather and my mother's Scottish, for God's sake. For me to complain about the weather is ridiculous. Bring on the rain - I don't care at all."

It was evident he was still very upset by events in Vancouver and he took the time to stress that love for Tea Leoni was the prime factor in his demand to go to Los Angeles.

He added: "After living abroad for five years, I wanted to go home because I now had a wife and I wanted to live with her. I thought this was reasonable."

HIS passion for Tea was not an instant thing. On their first meeting, he couldn't stand the girl who talked so much that no one else could get a word in.

He admitted: "That was my first impression, that this girl talks all the time. But I'm from New York and my first impressions are usually harsher than they should be.

"Later on, I saw Tea on a magazine cover and thought 'there's the girl who talks all the time - isn't she cute'. It took five minutes of a phone conversation for me to revise that first impression."

Now the couple talk of the possibility of having a family and Duchovny says they would give their kids Scottish names, a tribute to his mother Meg's Aberdeenshire roots.

No doubt he'd wear his kilt - a gift from the Daily Record - to any christening. There certainly wouldn't be any complaint from Tea, who adores seeing her hubby in the kilt.

Duchovny laughed: "She even asks me to do the dishes while I'm wearing it.