Duchovny confirms all those ‘so laid back he’s horizontal’ rumours. But if he gets really nervous on set, he says: "I take it out on someone else."

You've sung on TV with Barenaked Ladies. You've just written and directed an episode of The X Files. And you're preparing for a new life where people come up to you and say:

Didn’t you used to be ?

David Duchovny is in the middle of possibly the busiest week of his life. He’s just finished writing and directing his first episode of The X-Files and is working on the post-production; his wife (actress Téa Leoni) is about to give birth to their first child any minute; and he’s still required for a dialogue-heavy episode of the supernatural hit show. Yet on set he’s remarkably calm, in good humour and seems happy to make some time for the interview.

These days Hollywood is awash with actors and actresses talking about new challenges, stretching themselves and boasting of the lengths to which they have gone to really get inside their role.

Duchovny is refreshingly free from all this cant. He’s always refused to take himself too seriously, once greeting a question about his family background with the quip:" I’m half Scottish and I’m half Jewish, so don’t ask me for money." Even when he ventures into some meaningful philosophical discussion, a taste he acquired as a Ph.D candidate at Yale University, he pulls back from full-blown intellectual pretention. Asked in one of his first interviews why he'd decided to become an actor instead of finishing his Ph.D, he said: "You may think you're making decisions, but as Kierkegaard said: `The moment of decision is madness.' If you could look inside your mind at that moment, all you would find is craziness and confusion. I think he was talking about every decision, including ordering food. But at some point you just say [and here he bangs the table] `Goddamit, I'll have the muesli'.‘

When he was picked to play Mulder, his biggest relief was that he didn't have to wear a dress "The first time I played an FBI agent [as transvestite Denise Bryson in Twin Peaks] I was modelled on J Edgar Hoover!" The show's blurred boundaries between reality and fiction have helped to propagate paranoia and conspiracy but Duchovny doesn't see this as a problem. "There are people who think Melrose Place is true - that's far more worrying." Today, he’s in such a fine mood, he even agrees to answer a few questions as his fictional alter ego.

You were once asked what you and Mulder have in common, and you answered: "We look alike."

[Laughs] Well, we still have that in common. Except he’s gotten older – I haven’t aged but he has.

Let's try a few more questions about Mulder's character.

Go ahead, as long as you understand that my answers might be a little tongue in cheek.

First, how would Mulder like to die?

Hmm. I think he should die in the way that was forecast in an episode called Clyde Bruckman, where he said he should die of auto-erotic asphyxiation [grins]. I'm kinda looking forward to that episode - maybe next year.

Which historical character does he most identify with?

Don Quixote, or in his case maybe it should have been Don Quicksand! Or maybe Sherlock Holmes.

Where would Mulder go on holiday?

Florida during Spring Break [annual booze binge for students] with all the college kids. That's about his level of maturity.

Would he be participating or just observing?

He'd be there on the sidelines hoping he'd be asked to join in.

Which living person would he most admire?

Muhammed Ali. I don't know why [laughs]. No - because he deserves to be admired. I think everybody should admire Muhammed Ali.

There's been a lot of speculation on the Internet about whether or not Mulder is Jewish. Any thoughts on that?

There's kind of a gently chiding anti-semitism that passes in Hollywood and in TV, so you're kind of allowed to make fun of Jews. As I'm half-Jewish, I think the writers have felt they’d have their bases covered and they can take little baby swipes at the size of my nose. I can guarantee that if I was half black those jokes wouldn't be made, but hey - that's Hollywood.

Still on Web-related topics, you've been dubbed the first Internet sex symbol with hair - how do you feel about that?

What? Was Patrick Stewart the first one or something? He's got no hair anywhere? I really don't know him that well, I'm afraid. [Grins] Well, considering the alternatives, I'll take it as a compliment. Any time you're dubbed a sex symbol it's very flattering that anyone would say that about you. I mean, it's better than having somebody say you're a shit.

Do you get on the Net much at all?

No. I've only ever done it once a couple of years ago at my manager's office. My assistant was showing me some of the Web pages about The X-Files and me, and then he showed me one of the chat rooms. I decided to get on and talk to them but nobody would believe it was me! I was typing: "Hi, it's David here" and they were responding: "Yeah, right!" and I couldn't convince them it was me so I gave up! [laughs]

One interesting suggestion that has been made there is that The X- Files is really based on Scooby Doo.

Really? [Grins] Well, it's very close. Chris [Carter, the series' creator] always says his inspiration was a show called Kolchak The Night Stalker but it could very well have been Scooby Doo.

Scooby does sound a bit like Mulder's nickname Spooky...

Spooky Doo? Hmm, I suppose so, but if I was gonna be anybody from that show I'd be Shaggy [grins]. I wish I could be more forthcoming but that's taken me by surprise. I don't have a great answer but I can say I'm not insulted by the idea.

How does your mother view your success?

She won't watch me if I get killed or naked.

You’ve just written and directed your first episode of The X-Files. How was it?

Pretty nerve-racking actually, but in the end I have to say everything worked out pretty well. It's like an all-encompassing focus that you need to have for a month and it's still going on. Each stage of post-production is just as consuming and you don't want to let any little detail get away from you at this point. It never really ends until the show goes to air.

You were rained out for a couple of days and you lost one of your actors to ill health after he'd already done a few scenes. That couldn't have been easy.

These things happen. Sometimes you get weather and we got weather! I was watching the news the other day and they said that a Dodgers game had been washed out for the first time since the 1980s, so it's bad luck but it happens. You just have to get on with it. One of the actors did get sick so we had to recast and reshoot, but it wasn't like we had to deal with an earthquake or anything.

You didn't get paranoid enough to feel that things were conspiring against you?

Well, Carol [Banker, script supervisor] obviously was undermining me at every opportunity [laughter from him and those nearby], but apart from that, no.

The episode is called The Unnatural, presumably a play on the Robert Redford film The Natural, and it involves baseball. How did you come up with the idea?

Well, I was lying in bed with Carol one morning... [more laughter from colleagues]. No, seriously - it was during the home-run race last year between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa [both players broke a long-standing baseball record for the number of home runs hit in season] and there was an article in the paper about this minor league player who had hit more home runs than anybody in organised baseball. He played on a team in Roswell, New Mexico, an important location for UFO people. I just made the association - what if this guy was an alien? - and started working on that idea.

I made the guy black and factored in Jackie Robinson going into the major leagues [the first black baseball player to do so], which happened right around the time of the Roswell mystery. So there were all these happy chronological coincidences I was able to use, and the fact that I set it all in the 1940s meant that I could do a lot of it in flashback, so I didn't have to be so heavily involved as an actor. It kind of all fell into place for me.

You specifically wanted Jesse Martin for the title role, so were you heavily involved in casting?

Well, I'd seen Jesse in the musical Rent a few years ago and he was great. Then I saw him on Ally McBeal and he was great on that, and he just had the right feel. The other major parts were all recurring characters, so I only really cast Jesse.

You've never directed before. Did you get the idea of how to do it by watching others in five and half years on the show?

You have an idea, but you never really know until you do it how specific it all is, or how much energy you need. But I had a director of photography and a first assistant director and a script supervisor, and they all know much more than I do about this, so they kept me in line.

Is it an experience you'd want to repeat?

Yeah, if you have something that you want to do. I really liked the idea that I directed, so it was easy to be involved. It would be harder to spend that kind of energy on something you didn't really believe in. But overall my experience was good.

Now that you live and work in Los Angeles, do you miss your hometown New York?

It depends on what I'm doing. I don't know - I've been based in LA for ten years, so I could use a change and New York would be nice, but I have no plans to move any time soon.

As a native NewYorker have you ever sung New York, New York after a few drinks?

[Grins] Not New York, New York, no. The only song I've ever sung in front of people who weren't very close to me, is Prince's ‘If I Were Your Girlfriend.’ I did it for an audition once.

What was the audition for?

I honestly don't remember, I just remember singing it. Then more recently I sang on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I sang with Barenaked Ladies.

So how did that come about?

They were appearing on a sitcom on the same lot where we film. They like the show - they make a reference to it in that song [One Week - "Watching X Files with no lights on"]. They came by to visit and they said they were doing Leno on that Friday And I said: `hey - I'm doing that show too! Let me sing back up vocals for you?' And they said: `Sure!' and I said: `No, I'm only kidding - I can't sing!' And they said: `No, it'll be fine - don't worry' So I asked which song, and they sent me their CD and I listened to it a million times So I said: `Well, I can do the falsetto part and I can play the `egg' [a miniature maracca] for you [grins]. So we worked up a little routine and I did it. And I had a really great time doing it.

You also talked a bit on that show about imminent parenthood. I know you chose not to know whether it's going to be a boy or girl, but it seemed like you and Téa have had some interesting discussions on names for the baby.

You mean Uniformed Cop? That's still a possibility [grins]. Téa and I were talking about roles that were meaningful to us at the start of our careers as possible names for children. We thought it would be a nice link between our lives and their lives. So we came up with a list that included, for a boy, Uniformed Cop Duchovny or Man At Bar Duchovny. And for a girl one of the possibilities was Hooker/Whore Duchovny! And we had a couple that could be for either sex, like Passer By Duchovny We thought it was funny but I'm not sure everybody watching the show got it.

We've talked about music. What about literature what was the last book you read?

Oh, that's a sad question - that's really sad. I don't even know. I think it was The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, but I'm not sure if I even finished it. I haven't been reading much at all recently - my mum will be disappointed. But did you know that reading is like the TV of the 15th century? It's respectable now, but when it first came out they said it would kill young minds [grins] with those fantasies and stories of faraway places - just like they are saying now that computers are like that. We say reading is good for you but I'm not so sure [smiles]. We're probably the last generation that will read!

Did you have idols growing up and, it so, who were they?

Yeah! Probably Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays [baseball players], Walt Frasier - they're all athletes who probably won't mean much in the UK.

No movie stars on the list?

No. I didn't know that acting was a profession. I assumed that the people I saw on TV and in movies were like that!

Did you watch any sci-fi shows on TV?

Star Trek.

Did you identify with any of the characters?

Kirk! And Scotty and Spock! Kirk because he was the hero, Spock because he was cool. Scotty because he was Scottish and my mother's Scottish. It was a show we watched with my mum - she liked it, so we liked it. My dad [who wrote the screenplay for a TV one-off called the Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald which ‘proved’ he couldn't have shot John F Kennedy] didn’t like anything but if my parents liked a show, we got to watch it.

You once said you grew up watching Benny Hill.

Yeah, she liked Benny Hill and Monty Python and the Two Ronnies - I saw all those.

What’s the most disappointing thing about fame?

Probably that it doesn't go away! If it goes away it turns into something ugly like infamy! You can't just take it away. Once you're famous you're either still famous or you used to be famous. So I guess it changes everything for ever. Even if you don’t have it anymore you're stuck with it. You're in that embarrassing state or what people think of as that humiliating state of having ‘used to have been somebody’. [Grins] I don't think that's so bad. When we look at it from the outside we think: ‘Oh, that must be so terrible', but it must be something of a relief for those people. I don't think they really give a shit that someone thinks: ‘Oh, they used to be famous.’ As long as they're happy, who cares really!

Has being famous made ‘Trust no one’ a good motto for you?

It's more a case of `Be careful who you trust: Sometimes people ask me to do an interview when I don't really have anything new to say. There have been times when I've done that and then a section will be taken out of context in some tabloid - which may not bother me, but it might bother my family or my friends who have to deal with the fall-out. That's why it's easier when you have something specific to talk about, like a new movie. I get just as scared as the next person when there's nothing to focus on, because I don't want to have to try and be more entertaining or charming than I'm actually capable of being. [Grins] Have I put you off yet? Sometimes, it's a pain because you can't watch people for the movement, the gesture, that you can rip off and use later. Suddenly, it's you that's being watched because you're famous.

I know you're not prepared for questions like these, but what's your take on cloning?

Good and bad. I don't know, maybe it's all bad - you know, growing ears on rats and stuff. But if I had one ear I'd probably want to grow an ear for myself but I have everything I need right now so it seems odd to think about people cloning themselves. It seems to have shades of a master race and so on, but hey [grins] - if I needed an ear I'd grow one on a rat!

Looking back on nearly six years of The X-Files, are there any worst or funniest moments?

Well it's not pleasant being out in the cold and rain covered in gunk, but I don't really think about worst times. Funny? There was a moment when we were doing an episode called Small Potates and Darren Morgan, who's one of our writers, was playing a guy who could change his shape and become me.

He’d been born with a tail, so I was supposed to catch him and pull his pants down a little to see the scar! And when I pulled, Ipulled them down all the way and there was this full ass staring me in the face![laughs]. We have the footage but I was just paralysed with laughter! I had no idea his pants were that loose and I just pulled them right down.

That’s not the first laugh you’ve had with him, is it?

No [grins]. Early on - I think it was in the second season - he had another role as a six-foot intestinal worm. Now I'd never actually met Darren, and of course he was in costume all the time I was working with him. Then I was flying back to LA from Vancouver, and there was this guy sitting next to me who kept talking to me and asking questions about the show, and I’m thnking ‘Who the fuck is this guy ?’. It wasn't until we got to LA that he introduced himself and the penny dropped!

What do you think of computer-generated actors?

Which actors out there are computer generated? Keanu Reeves looks like... totally real to me [grins]. I don't know I suppose that - or cloning - would make it possible for this show to go on for as long as people want it - and allow me the time to go and do something else. They could computer-generate me for years seven through 12 - that might be nice.

As long as they send you the cheques, I presume?

Yeah! I don't know... It's a little scary to think that your image could be manipulated after you're dead, but then again it’s just an image. It's not really you - it's not like the desecration of a corpse or anything.

Fred Astaire’s widow is leading the argument over whether or not her husband’s image should be used in a commercial without payment of some kind.

I think they should get paid. It's like an author leaves a body of work behind and they're producing plays or movies out of that work. I think it’s like an inheritance in a way, therefore your family or children should benefit from that. If you have made your image public, which is a bargain that you strike, you get money in return. If they continue to use that after you’re dead I think your family should get that money.

Is it true that you believe in ghosts?

Yeah, in a way. When my Scottish grandmother was a girl, she says she saw her grandfather, who had drowned a couple of years before, walk up to the crib where her younger brother was sleeping, nod and walk out.

Your unfinished Ph.D dissertation entitled Magic And Technology In Contemporary Fiction And Poetry- what was that all about?

Let’s just say it was a good topic. If anybody wants it to finish their dissertation-help yourselves.

Finally, if science could guarantee that you lived forever, would you want to?

Could I be fairly young? I don't want to age forever. I mean, who would want to live forever if you couldn't do anything except get older?

In a more Dorian Gray scenario?

Sure! I don’t think anybody would want to live forever without eternal youth of some kind. Or maybe you'd take the offer and hope they figure out a way to keep me young somewhere down the line? [Grins]. In those circumstances I might be up for it! Let's face it, nobody really knows what the alternatives are!

Isn’t this where someone’s supposed to say: ‘The truth is out there’?

[Grins] So they tell me!