Duchovny X-Rayed

To the world at large, he is Fox Mulder, the hero of the X-Files, Chris Carter's cult series, which has just been turned into a movie. We meet a different sort of actor, whose style is one of nuance and subtlety, and who dreams more of poetry than of UFOs and extraterrestrials.

The name of the character from the series is almost better known than his own. Fox Mulder is cold, distrustful, distant, sometimes cynical. A very special FBI agent whom his colleagues have nicknamed "Spooky", since his preoccupation with paranormal phenomena has become an obsession. With his acting style, which verges on not acting at all, resembling the Michaelangelo statue which is his namesake, David Duchovny dominates the television series: in the movie, we encounter a fine actor, painting in semi-tones, who has portrayed the character of Fox Mulder with enormous restraint for five years. In real life, we meet a man who is charming, easy-going, very cultured - he has Master's in English Literature - who wants to publish his poems and dreams of hiding away his paranoid alter ego to film with Oliver Stone. At 38, this New Yorker, recently married to the sitcom star, Téa Leoni (The Naked Truth), seems to suffer from having to spend 10 months a year in Vancouver making the series, to the detriment of his private life and other movie offers. For us, he lives his life X rayed in the episodes of the series (shown on M6) through which he has become famous. It's the journey of an intellectual to the land of extraterrestrials......

OUBLIETTE

"I decided to become an actor relatively late. I was studying literature at Yale (one of the most prestigious American Universities). I was writing plays, and I told myself that it would do me good and improve my writing, if I also studied acting. To be able to understand performing from within. At Yale, there is a well-known course that writers and dramatists attend. The lecturers have a constant need of actors to put on little performances. They take anybody, and so they took me on. I began acting, and I enjoyed it, but...I was dreadful! I wanted to improve, it was an exciting challenge.

"I enrolled at an acting class in New York, because I did not want anyone at Yale to find out about it. You know, when you are at Yale, teaching English literature, it's like being in Med School as an intern: If the powers that be get to know that the intern - with all the work he has - is occupying his spare time with acting, you can imagine how annoyed they'd get.... That's why I wished to keep the two separate. For a year and a half, I taught at Yale during the day and then in the evening, I caught a train to New York to take my acting class. And then one day, the enjoyment of acting was greater than that of the university. Even though I still write. Poetry above all... I have to say that I love above all poets like Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, John Donne. Verlaine and Baudelaire as well, but, sadly, I've only been able to read those in translation. Can I say, in passing, that I'm looking for an editor for my collection of poems???"

CONDUIT

"I'd already made three or four feature films, including Kalifornia with Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis. I was fairly happy with how my career was developing. I had decided, in spite of the opportunities it offered, not to do any more television, so as not to shut myself into a series which could last ten years. One day, my agent called me and said: 'I know that you do not want to do television, but I think you ought to read this script....' It was for the pilot of a series called The X-Files. I read the script, whose title was 'We are not alone' and I found it so good and so different from the others that I said to myself 'this will never catch on on television, and that I can accept the Pilot without worrying!'"

TESO DOS BICHOS

"The production company commits to you for only six episodes, but you are contracted for five years by the same deal. That way, if the series doesn't take off, they let you go. And if it does, they've got you and are assured that you cannot capitalize on your presence with a better deal! Those are the rules of television: purchase actors cheaply before they're well known. It's very common but very unfair.. The press often talks about the financial demands of stars of the television screen, but what these journalists forget to mention is that these actors are only trying, for the most part, to make good the injustices they've suffered before becoming famous!"

DIE HAND DIE VERLETZT

"I wanted to be more involved in the life and backstory of my character, so from the 2nd Season, I started offering ideas for certain episodes to Chris Carter (the creator and writer of the series and the movie) (Colony, Anasazi). What interested me was not stories about monsters or aliens, but rather the psychology of the characters. The only episode which was completely my idea was for Mitch Pileggi, the actor who portrays Skinner, the Assistant Director of the FBI. He appears often in the series, but only for a few scenes. You know virtually nothing about him. I wanted him to have an episode that was his alone, so I wrote 'Avatar' for him. He even has a scene that's pretty...hot (knowing smile). He was very happy."

FOLIE A DEUX

"I do not think that Mulder trusts any one other than Scully. He’s very solitary. She is the only one who takes him seriously. I don’t know if they’re in love. In a way, their relationship is deeper than that, because they cannot live without each other.

"When I play a scene with Gillian Anderson, there are always little looks between us which mean 'what do you think about what’s happening?' It’s a little as if we have secrets between us. Everything is conveyed by communication beyond words. Perhaps, after all, you could interpret that as love (cynical smile). But from that to imagining Mulder and Scully as a couple... I don’t think that’s going to happen one day. The intrigue is so intense in episodes of The X-Files and the script so focused on the paranormal, that I have difficulty seeing Mulder and Scully hiding somewhere, waiting for the villains, talking about the problem of the lavatory seat being left up all the time. That’s for Dynasty!

"Of course, everybody is waiting for the moment they sleep together. But there has already been five years without showing a single sex scene, so who can say when that will happen? Have you seen the film? Have you seen the scene where you think that it’s going to happen? Me too, I thought it was going to happen then. When I saw the film, I shouted out just like everyone else in the cinema. But after all, perhaps their relationship has lasted five years precisely because they haven’t slept together?"

THE X-FILES

"I try to act in the most realistic way possible. In life, there are highs and lows, so when you’re acting you can’t stay 'up' all the time. In real life, do you cry or shout without letting up? I know there are people who say: 'Why watch him? He doesn’t do anything.' But that’s the way I act, that’s how I retain my integrity. Some understand, some don’t. But that’s how it is. What’s funny, is that when I’m in the audience, I like actors who do what I don’t! Like Nicholas Cage, for example, I love Marlon Brando, Robert Duval, Al Pacino - he’s the best - and so many others.... I’m ashamed not to remember to mention the others... Oh, yes, there’s also Sean Penn.

"Acting requires a sort of unconsciousness, or at least, a lack of self consciousness. You forget yourself completely. If you can’t stand yourself, it doesn’t matter. With creative people, artists, you often find this forgetting of the self.

"My favorite quotation on the acting profession comes from an actor - I can’t remember his name - who said 'his problem is that he loves himself, but he’s not sure if it’s mutual!'" (laughter)

SHAPES

"The most difficult challenge with the film was to make it as accessible as possible both to the fans of the series and to those who had never seen it. How also to make it so that the fans don’t feel that you’ve taken everything back to the beginning? I feel that with that we’ve succeeded. Novices will feel they’re discovering a new world and the others will understand and appreciate the sub-text and the allusions to the series we’ve slipped in here and there.

"In any event, for me as an actor, it was something of a paradox to have to play Fox Mulder as in the beginning; I had to remind myself of his principal character traits, whereas I’m now used to playing him with certain things taken as read. I had therefore to reappraise him.

"Having Rob Bowman as the director of the film didn’t change us much, as he’s directed over 25 episodes of the series. We were in recognized territory! And that was very nice: he knew how I worked, I knew how he worked, we both knew what it was all about. In addition, he has a great flair for playing with big toys and with everything necessary to turn a piece of television into a real movie."

TEMPUS FUGIT

"I would have loved to have collaborated on the film script, but I did not have the time. We were right in the middle of the Fourth Season, I had two weeks Christmas holiday, after ten months up in Vancouver, filming twelve hours a day... I admit that I preferred to go home to LA rather than to work on the script with Chris Carter. It’s often said that an actor has a lot of free time between takes, but the writing process demands a different sort of concentration....

"I also didn’t have the time to make a feature length film. I did it last year with Playing God but it was at the cost of my vacation, and I’m not going to do it again! George Clooney can make films while he’s still in ER, because he’s not in all the scenes in the series. He’s one character of many. In the X-Files, there’s only Mulder and Scully. For as long as I’m in the series, I have to put other movie projects to one side. It’s a pity: I had to pass up making a film with Oliver Stone, who is one of my favorite directors, because our schedules weren’t compatible. But I’ll work with him one day."

LITTLE GREEN MEN

"Do I have nightmares about aliens? You French have noticed that you use the verb 'to make' nightmares, which is more active, rather than we Americans, we use the verb 'to have' nightmares, which is more passive. That's interesting, isn’t it? The French take more responsibility. (big smile) I dream of having other work, other roles, but I definitely don’t dream about aliens, because I know they’re only children in rubber suits! (laughter)

"I don’t believe in the government conspiracy. It’s a good dramatic ploy, that’s all. The public loves to believe in conspiracies. First of all, because it’s intriguing. And also because it’s reassuring to put the blame on others.... The truth is that there have always been evil men, who are not necessarily in alliance with one another, who act badly and who try to bring out the worst in society... Nonetheless, it’s pretty exciting to think that if you could find these people and kill them the world would know the truth and be happy. As far as I’m concerned, I don't think the truth is out there, it’s much more complicated than that. We are good and evil at the same time, but that’s not something people want to let themselves hear. You know, I’d become crazy if I actually believed the stories I act. That would mean, 'OK great, I’m trapped in a room with a ferocious alien who can change his shape and stab me in the back with one of his darts [sic].' It would be really scary if I believed it. And as far as the acting is concerned, I try to find parallels, elements of comparison which make the situations credible in my own eyes. It’s true that I find all these mysteries, these conspiracies, these extraterrestrial appearances a bit invasive, but more than anything, it’s Mulder’s long speeches and his procrastinations that I get fed up with. This way he has of always going all round the houses......."

GROTESQUE

"I’m very proud of the fact that Fox Mulder is not like a character in a soap opera or overly dramatic. I like his sense of humor, his frailities, and, above all, that he bears no resemblance to a James Bond clone. He’s not a winner, He loses all the time and yet, the public still admires him.

"In fact, to come back to nightmares, the only ones I have concern the fact that I’ve been interpreting the same character for five years. From a creative point of view, that’s a bit limiting, don’t you think? Indeed, I sometimes feel trapped in this character. On the other hand, thanks to the success of Fox Mulder and the series have brought, I will certainly one day receive offers of roles that I would never otherwise have had.

"Indeed, it’s possible that the movie which has gone very well in the United States will become a concept like James Bond, Star Trek, or Star Wars. In that case, I’d like to do the films. That would be a wonderful alternative. I could make an X-Files film every five or six years and accept other roles in other films. What a dream! What is certain, in any event, is that I won’t appear in the series for more than seven years. So one more year, and then I hand in my notice! Because I do have the impression today, after the movie and now I’m making the 6th Season of the TV series, that all I’m doing with my life is playing Mulder or talking about him..."

November, 1998. "Duchovny X-Rayed." Studio © (France).