From Elle Magazine (French), October 1998
Transcribed by and alfornos translated by lynx on alt.fan.david-duchovny

X-Files the Film Comes Out This Week
by Michel Palmiéri

One imagines him a little paranoid, obsessed by conspiracies. In fact, DD is a seducer with savage humor. UFOs? Mean very little to him. He prefers to speak of urban hip-hop streetwear, love, children...

For six years already, DD has lived under a false identity. For the millions of X-Files aficianados, he is Agent Mulder, the detective with the sad face, rummaging tirelessly in the files that the FBI has classified unsolvable.

M6, the channel that has broadcast The X-Files from the beginning has seen its viewership increase since the first episodes of the new season, 4.5 million viewers on average. This never-decreasing success earned the series its ultimate blessing, a big-budget adaptation on the big screen.

After Mission Impossible, The Saint or, more recently, The Avengers, X-Files finally has its movie version, subtitled Fight the Future (in theaters Oct 21). This is the occasion for ELLE to meet this seductive young man, with a degree in English literature and a talented basketball player whose sole apparent fault is his marriage to actress Téa Leoni.

ELLE: In the X-Files, the film as well as the series, you are always dressed with a discreet elegance: dark suit, white shirt and stylish tie. Did you choose this look?

DD: I created the character of Fox Mulder six years ago. All along, I imagined that he dresses himself as I imagine him to dress. But that's totally unrealistic: this unhappy functionary of the FBI wears suits that cost no less than $4000 apiece. So, without imagining that his bill is completely transferred to the account of his tailor (his tailor gives him the stuff?), it's an anomaly. It's even worse if one regards the duds of Scully, Gillian Anderson, my partner in the series: the annual budget of a government office couldn't handle it!

ELLE: Yourself, in your own life, how do you dress?

DD: Comfortably. Most often I'm in jeans and T-shirt.

ELLE: A white shirt sometimes?

DD: Sometimes. The shirts I prefer, I don't dare to wear in public. My wife has forbidden it now. It involves Hawaiian fabrics that she judges shouldn't be used to cover a sandwich.

ELLE: Fashion doesn't visibly obsess you, but do you like to go shopping?

DD: It's not a pastime that repulses me particularly, but it never happens that I clap my hands upon waking and say "Groovy! This morning I'm going to hit the boutiques."

ELLE: Do you follow a strict diet?

DD: Yes, I have two principles: don't swallow anything bigger than myself and avoid eating with my hands.

ELLE: Did you watch the recent World's Cup?

DD: No. I am not interested in sports that I don't play, and I play very little. With age, one tires fast. Today, two interviews in 15 minutes does me in.

ELLE: Do you smoke? Or, in Hollywood is it a vice that only the naughty indulge in?

DD: No, I've never smoked, I've never been with a cigarette. It's truly the people who know how, the people for whom the cigarette enobles their gestures. That's not me. Téa Leoni, my wife, is a superb smoker. I spend lots of time convincing her to do it well (?), especially not to stop. [huh? I'm not sure I get all this]

ELLE: Does not smoking suffice to make you a good [kind] boy?

DD: No, but my wife knows nothing of it. [I give up - I can't separate the dry humor from the irony here]

ELLE: She thinks that you are one? [a good boy]

DD: Yes, certainly. That's part of why she married me.

ELLE: At the end of the film, one thing remains very mysterious: yes or no, does the chaste Mulder kiss the prudish Scully?

DD: It's possible. At a certain moment, we are at the point of kissing, our lips touch, when, all of a sudden, a wasp interrupts our ...spirit.

ELLE: And when you did mouth-to-mouth to resuscitate her?

DD: The script didn't say that I kissed her at that moment. But, confidentially, I swear to you that I took the opportunity to give her some tongue.

ELLE: It's without doubt because of that stuff that, despite your marriage, certain tabloids continue to claim that you are having a liaison with Gillian Anderson.

DD: I read that myself. It's crazy the power of written things. When I read total fantasies about myself, I have a hard time believing they're not true. It takes on a certain reality, even if I am in a position to know, as in the example you site, that it is a total invention. Thus, you could say, when I read that a friend is pregnant or that a colleague has just separated from his wife, I am surprised to find myself thinking: "Wait, that's bizarre, I just saw him or her and I didn't notice anything!"

ELLE: Where do you live

DD: I live where the X-Files is filmed. Up to last year, the filming was in Vancouver. Since a few months ago, the series has been filming in Los Angeles and that's where we live, my wife and I. In marrying Téa Leoni, I was able to get the site moved so that my wife, who is an actress, can work as well.

ELLE: For an actor, is it conceivable to live far from Hollywood?

DD: It's possible if you're Sean Connery. If the studios think that if it's not you then no one else can play the role. In all other cases, it's prudent not to be far away.

ELLE: You want children. Is Los Angeles an ideal place to raise them?

DD: No. But, since it's there that we live, they better get used to it. And besides, I don't think there exists a perfect place to start a family.

ELLE: The more time passes, the more you resemble Richard Gere. Are you conscious of this? Does it make you happy or angry?

DD: Is Richard Gere popular in France?

ELLE: Very. Especially among the female public.

DD: OK, definitely say that I look very much like him. And if you find if I have something of Cindy Crawford, don't hesitate to write that...

ELLE: You were present at the premiere of the beautiful Cindy's Fair Game Did you find her as convincing on the screen as on the runway?

DD: She is beautiful.

ELLE: But, as an actress, how do you judge her?

DD: Very pretty.

ELLE: Do you take any public positions on the subject of society?

DD: I find it a little dishonest to sermonize on subjects that I only have approximate knowledge of, taking advantage of the platform that I'm offered by the media because of the success of The X-Files. I have an opinion on lots of things, but I prefer to keep them to myself. I am interested in politics, the environment, but I am an expert on nothing.

ELLE: Not even on flying saucers?

DD: I think you are confused. The specialist in UFOs is Mulder. Me, I don't know much and, truth be told, I am very skeptical about the existence of mysterious visitors. The only conviction that I share with Mulder is that it would be curious that no other form of intelligent life developed somewhere in the universe.

ELLE: What do you want the viewers of X-Files, the film, to get out of it?

DD: That it isn't only a continuation of the series, the adaptation of a cult-icon for the big screen and big budget - $60 million. It's a film, a real, good film - with moments of tension, emotion and even humor.

ELLE: And what do you want them to say about you?

DD: That I look like Richard Gere.

Palmiéri, Michel. Fall 1998. "X-Files the Film Comes Out This Week." Elle Magazine (French).