David Duchovny is ditching the small screen for as many movie challenges as possible, writes HELEN BARLOW.
DAVID Duchovny, The X-Files heart-throb, was a little tired. The slim, genial actor had been tramping the globe talking himself to a standstill as he publicised his latest and most successful movie to date, the touching, old-fashioned romantic comedy Return To Me.
If the recent success of fellow television-icon-turned-movie-star, George Clooney, is any indication, the effort just might be worth it.
Like Clooney, Duchovny is witty and smart, and is constantly the subject of magazine cover stories as a result. It is perhaps no surprise that the two affable, articulate men with a great sense of humour know each other, mostly because they have a mutual good friend in actor-director Bonnie Hunt (Tom Hanks's wife in The Green Mile).
Sitting together on a plane to New York, Clooney had suggested that Duchovny call Hunt regarding a part in her upcoming movie, because it might just be what the actor was after. When he had read Hunt's screenplay Duchovny asked his wife Tea Leoni (Deep Impact) her opinion.
``We have similar takes on movies, but there are instances like this where Tea didn't know Bonnie like I did," Duchovny said. ``She thought the script was really straightforward and simple, but I knew that if you add Bonnie to that, it would be different."
Certainly Return To Me's tale of a widower who finds love again (with Minnie Driver) is sweet and sentimental. But Duchovny was right, in the hands of Hunt (who plays Driver's best friend) the film is touching and hilarious.
Still, given his droll FBI agent and his earlier erotic roles, we've never really thought of Duchovny in that way.
``I think we all are sentimental underneath," he said. ``But this is really Bonnie's vision of romance, a world that doesn't have any cultural reference after 1965. I don't think this movie is meant to define a way of life; it's simply meant to be an escape like any good love story."
In person, the casually dressed actor, who turns 40 on August 7, seems like a regular guy. There are hints of movie star charm at times he resembles a young Richard Gere yet he is much too understated.
Would he like to portray more romantic leads? ``I'd like to do everything. I don't think of getting myself to the position where I do the same thing over and over again, I've already learned that lesson."
His lesson, of course, was learned on The X-Files, and he is surprisingly open as to the outcome of his recent lawsuit against 20th Century Fox and the show's creator Chris Carter, for reneging on a deal regarding his share of the television series' profits.
Part of the settlement was that Duchovny would sign on for an eighth X-Files season. ``I didn't really want to do it, but I'm doing it in a diminished capacity," he explained. ``I'm only doing as little as six full episodes and possibly bits in up to 11. So in time that's about three months as opposed to 10, so it's a big difference for me."
You get the impression that if Duchovny set his mind to it, he could succeed at anything. When his Return To Me co-star Driver quipped that he's ``too smart to be an actor", he responded, ``That's a nice way of saying it", as if she meant he was too smart for his own good.
With a masters degree in English Literature from Yale University, the 25-year-old New Yorker was about to complete his doctorate and his thesis, titled Magic And Technology In Contemporary Poetry And Prose, when he fell into acting.
``I was trying to figure out how to write for the stage," Duchovny recalled, ``so I thought maybe I should try to figure out what it is to be an actor, to say words that other people write. Life has a way of happening around you."
After smaller parts in Ruby, Chaplin and Beethoven (where he met Hunt) Duchovny starred in the independent movies The Rapture and Kalifornia. But it was as the narrator of women's fantasies on the erotic cable television series Red Shoe Diaries that he first emerged as retiring, sensitive and sexy, that combination which still has women drooling.
He played a troubled doctor in the box office under-performer Playing God, and brought Mulder to cinemas in the 1998 feature, The X-Files: Fight The Future.
Now, as he is looking for a varied career in movies, he says he chooses by ``gut instinct. It's crazy, unreliable. I just know that I like that one and I don't like that one. If they tell me to do that one, then I don't care, I do what I want. There's no rhyme or reason really, I wish there was."
Having already written and directed an X-Files episode featuring his wife, he wouldn't rule out the possibility of working with Leoni again but not on the series. ``It was sickening in a way how good she was," he beamed. ``She's such a powerful, unique performer."
The only obstacle is their infant daughter, Madelaine. ``It would be nice for the kid on the one hand, but then it would be difficult because we'd both be working at the same time. We're thinking of doing on and off deals."
The ever-bubbly Leoni seems like the polar opposite to the more introspective Duchovny. One of the most devoted of Hollywood couples, their differences obviously make for a healthy relationship.
``She's not bubbly all the time, she can be a pain in the ass," he protested. ``But she's definitely an optimistic, capable, active person. I love her capability.
``She's just able to do stuff. She tackles problems. She's not passive."
Is Duchovny passive? ``I can be. I'm more in my head than Tea is. She's more in the world. But then we switch roles. Sometimes I'll be totally taking charge and she'll get passive. But that's another movie."
Return To Me opens on Thursday.
