David Duchovny Quotes

1. Gillian and I have a brother/sister relationship. If you work with someone daily for twelve hours, that person, if she is smart and Gillian is smart shouldn't want to meet the other person after hours. That's also true for the other way round.


2. (2009, on landing "The X-Files") Well, there's a case in point. Way back in the audition process for that, I had a discussion with Chris Carter, because he wanted me to do well in front of the network. Just like you see in The TV Set, there's this kind of weird, barbaric ritual of reading people in a room in front of the network, suits and all. I think this might have been the third or fourth time I would have read in front of a network, not just for "The X-Files", but for other pilots that had come and gone without me. And Chris said, to help me out: "This guy's irreverent". I always remember there was a stage direction - and this'll really date the pilot - where Mulder was described as more MTV VJ than FBI agent. And to me, that was the key, that this guy didn't give a shit about what people thought of him. And that's, always a fun thing to play. When you don't care, you don't care. Because we all care what other people think, and we gravitate toward those characters in movies or TV who don't care. They have a strange kind of power and allure. And that was the key to Mulder for me, his sense of humor, and that he would bring that to FBI proceedings, or he'd bring it to Scully. You know, he was always willing to joke. And the key to that, in turn, was the desperate sincerity of his quest. So if you combine those two things, the emotional hurt over the loss of his sister, and his feeling responsible for that, combined with this "f... you" attitude, was the character. Those were the two halves of the ring for that character. And that lasted throughout the whole thing.

3. I think there are ways in which shows can pop their heads up a little bit in the morass of everything you can watch.

4. "Full Frontal" was a very short experience in my life. I believe I might have had two or three days filming on it. I think "Steven Soderbergh" shot it in two weeks, but that might be overstating it. Steven was somebody I had known for a long time. One of the first auditions I ever had was for "Sex, Lies, and Videotape". And I don't even know how I got into that audition, because I would have just started acting, but I read for Steven, and Steven wrote a very nice letter to Henry Jaglom-who's the guy I did my first film with, New Year's Day - saying that he had really enjoyed my audition, and blah blah blah. I always treasured that, especially once I saw Steven's work. And Steven had always said: "We'll do a movie together", and finally this project comes along, and he says: "It's about you! It's about your character!" I said: "Great, I can't wait to do it". And then I got the script and I just had like two scenes. It is about my character turning 40 or something, but I'm hardly in it, so I was like: "Thanks a lot, buddy".

5. We really have to reconsider what it is that a public person gives up. Why does a public person give up all his or her rights to privacy?

6. I don't know how anybody gets better at anything aside from doing it.

7. I would never sing in public. Because I've got a horrible voice. It just sounds bad. I mean, Tea claims to like to hear me sing, and I think it's because I enjoy it so much. We sing in the car…And she air-drums. This is why we have tinted windows. A lot of people think it's because we don't want people to see us and follow us home, but it's really because we're making fools of ourselves.

8. (on "Californication") I remember getting the script and thinking it was very funny in a way that hearkens back to more adult films of the '70s, like "Shampoo" or "The Last Detail", where you have an actual functioning adult navigating adult problems. When I looked around at the kind of stuff that was available to me, or even not available to me, the comedies were often that man - child thing, with boys in men's bodies navigating almost adolescent issues. So this was the kind of stuff I'd been wanting to do, and not necessarily the kind of movies being made at the time. It happened on television for me rather than in the movies, but it was the kind of material I wanted to do.

9. I think we all choose our style from the ether and whatever is out there.







10. I don't care why people love me, just as long as they love me. And I don't even care that they do so much. Is it better to have money or not to have money? Better to have love or not? Both money and love may be bad for the soul or bad for the art. I'm on a show that a lot of people like to watch. Does that make me better off?

11. Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within.



12. I'll join your squad if you don’t mind having a 37 year old who collects Barbies!

13. I'd love to direct more.

14. Mulder is forced to tell Scully what she means to him. And that can lead to personal involvement. There's definitely physical contact.



15. I asked for blue suits because I have light eyes. Ivan made me wear red.

16. Everyone was like: We're doing a movie, it's costing a lot of money, you're getting paid more money, what are you going to do different? Are you going to make it better?...The size of the screen doesn't make a big difference for the character. The character remains the same.

17. I don't like watching people work if they're making art.







18. I fought to have it in, and then I saw it, and then I - my ass didn't look as good as I wanted it to, and I fought to have it cut out...Now, I'm of the opinion that only gratuitous nudity is good nudity.

19. I wouldn't succeed at musical theater.



20. I guess we're just in an indefinite holding pattern...It's about Chris Carter and Fox coming to terms. Gillian and I are signed on. We're ready to go. Chris and Fox are slugging it out.

21. I've turned down jobs because I've said: "Honestly, I can't find my way in. I can't do it. I love you, as a director. I think the script is good. You deserve better than I think I can do."

22. I feel nostalgia for the show in a way...I'd always wanted it to be a movie franchise. I never thought that when I felt the show ending or when I wanted to leave the show that it was the end of the show. I always thought that it was a natural for the screen. I'm happy to go back and continue it that way.

23. I'm always trying to perfect the romantic comedy, though.

24. Linda Brewer's example is inspiring, colorful and potentially very funny. Her journey also exists firmly in the Heartland tradition of American success stories and comedies.

25. I don't make decisions based on money.



26. It's the nature of the business. It changes - sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse - and can be completely different from what you imagined.

27. I'm kind of stupid when it comes to gadgets.

28. I never, ever, ever cook. And I would never eat anything I might cook.

29. The key is to get to know people and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we trust people to be who we want them to be - and when they're not, we cry.

30. I'm half Jewish, half Scottish. It's hard for me to buy anything.





31. I'll instinctively know that I identify with a character.

32. Privacy is something I have come to respect. I think when I was younger I wanted to tell everybody everything, because I thought I was so damn interesting. Then I heard the snoring.

33. I don't need my phone to play me music. I need it to be a phone and an e-mail thing.

34. I've always been overly concerned about what people think which has resulted in a lot of inner turmoil. I try not to give a damn but inside I'm a huge ball of worry.

35. I'm not really a gamer.



36. If you're smart, you'll always be humble. 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.

37. I always dreamt of being a basketball player. A dream that only I believed in.

38. I'm frightened by the possibilities of my own lack of talent.

39. I'm trying to protect what I advertise. That's my stance on any kind of self-expression.

40. I think I'm nice enough to look at, but I think people make a big deal about my appearance. I think it was like hypnosis, like all of the sudden everybody's been trained: "OK, now cluck like a chicken!" "OK, now say David Duchovny's handsome!" I mean, I was a normal-looking kid, and whoever you are and whatever you look like, there are always things you want to change. I just remember that I wished I was blond. And I wished that my nose were smaller and my lips were smaller and my eyes were bigger...you know, everything.

41. I don't mind close-ups, I like them, but they're kind of forceful - you see a lot, you get a lot of information in a close-up. There's less mystery.





42. (on his role as "Agent Fox Mulder" on "The X-Files") It's pretty workaday, people don't seem to realize: You get up, you take a shower, you read the paper, you play Mulder.

43. I'm turning into a stricter dad.

44. (about "The X-Files") I get tired of people asking if I believe in what's presented on the show. They don't ask the guys on "ER" if they believe in euthanasia.

45. What makes me mad is arrogance, pretension, putting on airs.


46. Any scene where I can use a pipette, I'm happy - on one of his scenes from "Evolution".


47. I'm very proud of my Scottish blood.

48. (about his on screen chemistry with Gillian Anderson) It is nice and natural with Gillian, It was nice to work with her again. I don't know why we have such good chemistry, it is really mystical. We have always worked really well together. It is always easy to work with her.

49. I don't think I'd ever be cruel to an animal.



50. People say the world changes all the time, and yet human nature remains the same. I think what's changed is the size of our cell phones.

51. I've made so many mistakes. But it is my feeling that you learn from failures, so I welcome them as often as I can.

52. (on how his relationship with Gillian Anderson is now) It is very good, yes it is. We have a very good relationship. Different than when it was when we were shooting "The X-Files", we are both not exhausted all the time.

53. Women's fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It's men's way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they're actually tied up.

54. In high school and college, I was an athlete.


55. I don't think of myself as a TV actor. I think of myself as a film, television and Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway actor.


56. If you have Darwin, Christ and Nietzsche, they're all going to talk at once. You need somebody who listens.

57. I lost my virginity when I was 14. And I haven't been able to find it.

58. In terms of likeability, that's something that I don't think about as an actor when I approach a role.


59. I don't want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.

60. In the U.S., oddly, we have images of men as arrogant and aggressive.

61. I love dogs. They live in the moment and don't care about anything except affection and food. They're loyal and happy. Humans are just too damn complicated.

62. It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say.

63. I enjoy trying to figure out the best way to compliment the picture and not overpower it.

64. It's not someone else's responsibility to honor my marriage. It's my responsibility.

65. On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts.


66. It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.

67. I feel like I came to acting late in a way.





68. Most journalists expect me to answer all their questions about aliens and spaceships.

69. I feel I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it's not natural to me. So I don't take it for granted…What I think is my natural ability - which is writing - I think I totally take that for granted.

70. One of the nice things about acting is that it allows you to open up to the other people within you.

71. I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels.

72. One of the great things about doing series television is the guest actors that you can have come on and play around with.


73. I think patience is a skill and I wish I had it.

74. Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them.

75. I had a fear that I'd be typecast, but I don't really have that fear anymore.

76. People always love and respect characters who speak the truth, even if the truth hurts.


77. I don't believe in a conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life.

78. Sex is great until you die, but it's never as great as it was when you were a kid, when it was a mystery.

79. I just spend my money on the essentials. Just basically food and shelter.



80. Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it.

81. I enjoy comedy and I hope that people enjoy watching me do it.

82. Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.


83. I had to work in one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world for almost three weeks. Pity me.


84. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging the panoply of life's rich experience.

85. If my work was good enough, I would never have to do publicity.

86. When I grew up, I was in Manhattan the whole time. But my kids have been all over the world.


87. I like my computer. But I don't know how to use it as well as the 10-year-old daughter.

88. When I started getting notoriety it was cheesy to appear in a commercial.

89. Chemistry is really about two people who like to act together, I think. It's like tennis in the most cliched way. It's like if you hit the ball, they hit the ball back, and they don't hit it into the stands, and they don't put the ball in their pocket and walk off - and they don't argue with the umpire, you know?

90. You become tyrannized by this notion that women must not only be treated equally, but they must never fail.



91. I love the Lower East Side.


92. You can't control your mind. Why would you want to?

93. I think the real heroic teachers are the ones who work with kids, like my mom and my sister do.

94. You can go through life and actually speak your mind and do it in an articulate fashion and with a really intelligent point of view.






95. I love animals and I love working with them because they don't lie.

96. At one time there were voiceover artists, now there are celebrity voiceover artists. It's unfortunate because these people need the money less than the voiceover artist.

97. In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before.

98. Every day I try to do breathing exercises, meditation and yoga. These things sound awfully cliche, but they help me slow down and try to point to a truth.

99. I may be learning guitar, but I'll never be able to sing.

100. 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.

101. The happiest moment of my life was probably when my daughter was born.







102. Just like every show has a tone, every show has different people on it playing different games. I don't say "game" in a pejorative sense, I just mean, these are different stories that we tell ourselves when we go to work.

103. I mean, there's chemistry in life and there's acting chemistry. I'm not saying they're the same thing, but they're as mysterious.





104. My entire life has been an attempt to get back to the kind of feelings you have on a field. The sense of brotherhood, the esprit de corps, the focus - there being no past or future, just the ball. As trite as it sounds, I was happiest playing ball.

105. Without whining and without making myself a tragic figure, there is no replacement for the loss of your privacy. It's a huge sacrifice.




106. One of the scary things is that, when you're a kid, you look at your dad as the man who has no fear. When you're an adult, you realize your father had fear, and that you have it, too.

107. I mean, you always want everybody to pat you on the back and tell you you're wonderful every time you do something; I think that's human nature.

108. 98% of the people in the world are harmless and wish you well, but it only takes one person who doesn't. That's what you're constantly on guard against.

109. Actually, I have an interest in finishing my Ph.D., but I just know I never will.

110. Fame does lead to money, which I don't have a close relationship with. I'm the kind of guy who never sees the money - it all goes somewhere else. I don't understand it, I don't like to deal with it. I have a fear of not having it, because I grew up without it.

111. I never thought about the actors on television or film, like what kind of life they had.





112. For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids.

113. People think celebrities don't have to worry about human things like sickness and death and rent. It's like you've traveled to this Land of Celebrity, this other country. They want you to tell about what you saw.

114. I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

115. I really enjoy taking an outdoor shower.

116. I've run into certain geniuses of individualism - they are very few and far between - who live their lives completely on their own terms; they are very powerful and have a great amount of happiness. We all should aspire to that.

117. A lot of times passion projects or films are difficult to make because they don't have proven directors attached to them.

118. I was about 26 or 27 and it was imperative that I make a living right away and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film.



119. I still feel like I haven't grown up.

120. Maybe the best things about celebrity are the things like being able to get that seat on the plane that you wouldn't normally get, but that's kind of like cheating.




121. Games, by nature, have more plot options and non-linear qualities than TV and film.

122. My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do.

123. I think of myself as more of a comic person. I don't know about a comic actor.




124. There are certain things I learned when I first started learning about acting, to try and place the character physically and emotionally. And the way you place them emotionally is often with humor.

125. Humility is considered an un-masculine quality.

126. Whenever somebody says they need an angle for their story I always fear that they've got an idea and they want me to fit into it or they want me to come up with an idea myself or I'm supposed to be more revealing than I've been, and to me it just sounds like something I don't want to do.

127. I think people are always trying to demystify whatever acting is, so they want to know what your method is.

128. Willie Mays was the best ever. When I was in college I once made a catch like the one Mays made over his head. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night I think about it. It still makes me warm.

129. Approaching a part or thinking about taking a part, I never think: "Is that person like me?"



130. You're raising a kid and you give it food and shelter and, most importantly, you give it the feeling that it's special. I think people react to celebrities like that - I mean, they treat celebrities like children.

131. I think Polanski's an amazing director.

132. No sex between Mulder and Scully! Only deep friendship. People thinking there's more than that between us amuses me. With Gillian, we've created the illusion of romance.


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