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DAVID DUCHOVNY was born in the year 1960, on August the 7th. This magical event has happened in New York, in the family of Russian-Jewish father and Scottish mother. As a child, he was so reserved, his older brother enjoyed telling people that David was retarded. He wasn't. In fact, Duchovny won a scholarship to the prestigious Collegiate Prep School in New York. |
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classmates included John F. Kennedy, Jr., and actors Zach
Galligan (Gremlins) and Jason Beghe (Monkey Shines: An
Experiment in Fear). He went on to graduate from
Princeton as B.A. ("I discovered what preppie really
was. A level of Biff-dom I'd never seen before."),
where he played both baseball and basketball, and
eventually received a master's degree in English
literature from Yale. Duchovny has said his initial drive
to succeed and his subsequent desire to act were both a
result of his parents' divorce when he was eleven.
"I was always supposed to be the one who didn't have
any problems. And when I got to act, it was like all of a
sudden I could have problems." THE X-FILES' David Duchovny is the thinking woman's sex symbol. He was a dissertation away from a Ph.D. in English Literature at Yale University when he left academia to shill beer for Lowenbrau and bare his butt in low-budget erotic films. The title of his thesis, "Magic and Technology in Contemporary Poetry and Prose," has been appropriated as a moniker for one of the Internet's several DDEB's--David Duchovny Estrogen Brigades. DDEB 3: "Where Magic And Technology Meet" testifies to Duchovny's burgeoning popularity; its members share photos, facts, encounters ("he had stubble. *sigh*"), and any other esoterica available on their droll hero. Duchovny himself put it best: "I'm the conduit through which America views the soft underbelly of women's erotic desires." He made his feature film debut with a small role as a partygoer in Working Girl (1988) and quickly gained notice playing sleazoids in Henry Jaglom's New Year's Day, Julia Has Two Lovers, and The Rapture. Duchovny did a brief stint on TV's Twin Peaks as cross-dressing F.B.I. agent Dennis Bryson, before taking on supporting roles in less trashy movies like Chaplin and Ruby. But it was his recurring role as Jake, the cuckolded narrator of women's fantasies, on Showtime's Red Shoe Diaries that cemented his reputation as a sensitive sex symbol. Duchovny's break-out role, of course, has been F.B.I. Agent Fox Mulder alongside Gillian Anderson's ever-cynical Agent Dana Scully on Fox's The X-Files, a paranormal drama in which the pair investigate all things spooky. He describes his relationship with co-star Gillian Anderson as "complicated," saying "we just get enough of each other right now." For her part, Anderson laughs and says that "David is a really nice guy. He's got the ability to be absolutely compassionate and caring." But, says Anderson, "[He's] also one of the moodiest people I've ever met. But you forgive him because he's so charming and can be so sweet and funny." The TV Guide issue is out now, and feature |