David Duchovny, 37, grew up in New York's Greenwich Village, going to school with John F Kennedy Jnr, cycling through the streets delivering groceries and dodging bullies. For the past four years he has played the unflappable Agent Mulder on The X Files, and his new film, Playing God, has recently been released in the US. A former PhD student at Yale, Duchovny recently married the actress Tea Leoni. He has two homes, one in Vancouver, where the X Files is filmed, and one in Los Angeles.
Q Do you cringe when you see yet another paranoid X Files script?
A The show is no more paranoid than previous programmes have been. There have always been witch hunts. It couldn't happen, but we have to make people feel it could. My job is to sell it to them. You have to trust Agent Mulder, so he can't be a nut, otherwise the show would be nutty.
Q But do you believe in the show's nutty conspiratorial premise?
A Whether we are alone or not is a religious question I don't want to go into. I get tired of people asking if I believe in aliens. They don't ask the guys on ER if they believe in euthanasia.
Q How do you and your wife handle marriage, since your show is made in Vancouver and Tea is based in Los Angeles?
A We try to spend as much time together as we can. It's a constant battle with our schedules. I might not do The X Files much longer.
Q What happened en route to becoming Dr Duchovny?
A I realised that I wasn't ready to sentence myself to a lifetime of sitting in a room by myself, writing about 'magic and technology in modern North American literature'. I began searching for something else. I said, 'I know, I'll write drama. That way I can work with actors, a lot of whom are pretty girls'.
Q How did that lead to becoming an actor?
A If you're going to write for actors, you should learn how actors work. I tried it and I enjoyed myself more than I had for years- not since I'd played sports as a boy. It was like passing the ball and the crowd cheering. It was a peak experience. I couldn't get that from writing.
Q Why had you thought you should be an academic?
A My ambitions were implanted rather than instinctual. Since I stopped being a student I have realised that you can learn all you want, but there'll always be somebody who's never read a book who'll know twice what you know.
Q What was your parents' influence?
A My mother, who is from Aberdeen, was a teacher. My father, who is from Coney Island, had written some plays and also prized the life of the mind. He wasn't around after I was 11, but my mother encouraged me academically.
Q How do you feel about your mixed heritage?
A I feel half Scottish, but I've only been to Scotland twice, both times when I was a small child. I'm also a New York Jew, which is different from any other New Yorker and any other Jew. I'm a little schizophrenic, as you'd expect a Scottish Jew to be.
Q As someone who played a transvestite (on Twin Peaks), are you fully in touch with your feminine side?
A I don't know about that, but when I graduated from high school, everybody got tagged with their female equivalent. The guys came up with Angie Dickinson for me. I thought that was right on. I saw the resemblance.
Q What else do you remember about growing up?
A When I was 14 I had a job as a delivery boy for a meat market. I rode around on a big bike. It was interesting to get glimpses inside people's homes when I unloaded their groceries. One thing, though, people feel free to throw things at boys on those bikes in New York- eggs, tomatoes, paper cups full of Coke... And you're not going fast enough to avoid being hit.
Q What's the downside of being famous?
A Being recognised everywhere makes meat deliveries impossible.
Q And the advantages?
A I get good tickets to shows and free sneakers.
Q What makes you laugh?
A I'm a physical humour kind of guy. I laugh at Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Mr Bean.
Q What was your most frightening moment?
A Waiting to go on a chat show, Late Show with David Letterman, for the first time. I was having trouble breathing. It's tough for an actor to go out on stage as himself. With Letterman, I was afraid he'd laugh at me and everyone would wonder what I was doing there.
Q Is that a recurring nightmare?
A Exactly! I have actors' nightmares. I'm on stage and I don't know my lines. Or I have student nightmares, where I'm tested on something I never read. All those dreams fall into the category.
Q If you could be anyone, who would it be?
A I wouldn't mind being Mick Jagger for a day. I'd just do one concert and have 60,000 people yelling at me.
Q What will be your epitaph?
A He tried and he died.
