Star’s roundabout way into showbiz

DAVID Duchovny ( pictured) has starred in two hit TV shows, The XFiles and Californication, and yet the thought of going into showbiz never occurred to him when he was growing up.

“I never even had the wayward thought. It never even entered even the furthest reaches of my imagination. I never thought about the actors on TV or film, like what kind of life they had,” he said.

Duchovny, 51, said he didn’t begin acting until his late twenties

“I wanted to write plays. I was at Yale graduate school at the time for English literature, not for acting. I liked the idea of collaboration and thought if I’m gonna write plays I should learn about speaking the lines I might write. It might help me as a writer to know it from that side,” he said. “So that’s pretty much how it started.”

His career took off with roles in Twin Peaks, Red Shoe Diaries and, of course, The X-files, which made him a star and a sex symbol.

“I was kind of blissfully overconfident at first and I don’t say that as a joke,” he said. “I knew I thought I was good. Not great. Not in a cocky way, but like, ‘Yes, I can do this’.”

Duchovny credits The X-files with helping him with acting.

“Every day I’d to go to work and every day for 14 hours, year after year. I don’t know if I would’ve made it to this point if I had just gone from movie to movie, like a three-month stint here and a threemonth stint there. It was very good for me and my craft, to have to go in every day and do it.”

When he looks back at X-files episodes, they remind him of home movies: “I’ll remember the day, I’ll remember the lunch, I’ll remember the weather and will laugh at how bad I am, or stuff like that. It used to come on and I’d say to (wife) Téa (Leoni): ‘Can you just see how bad I am?’ and she would never agree. But it’s kind of funny embarrassing. Like home movies.” – Sapa-ap