Agent Mulder will soon be no more. This could be a blessing for actor David Duchony; apart froma long run in the low-budget soft-porn series The Red Shoe Diaries, he's known almost solely for his role as the laconic FBI agent who believes in the supernatural and the little green men who kidnapped his sister.

But what a role: there are hundreds of obsessive fan-sites devoted to him. One is the "David Duchovny Red Speedo poems page". One entry reads: "Look at Mulder/Almost naked/Little red Speedo/Oh I wish he'd take it." The upcoming eighth series of The X-Files seems set to be his last: he was tempted back for 11 of the 22 episodes at a reported fee of $US20 million, even after suing Fox for lost income. About halfway through the series he'll be kidnapped himself, when Dana Scully teams up with her new partner in a quest to find him.

(He gave this interview before agreeing to the eighth series, leaving the following quote which may come back to haunt him: "So if I was a lazy person just interested in making tons and tons of money I could do it." )

And now hes in a new film, Reurn To Me, opposit Minnie Driver. He plays a recently widowed architect who's trying to come to terms with his wife's death. He meets Driver who has just received his dead wife's heart in a transplant. Neither know this: they fall in love.

Sounds bit ridiculous? Don['t tell Duchovny. "What attracted and scared me about this script is how I hadn't read a script like this maybe ever where it was just so straight-ahead sentimental and magical in that way. Here I am, in this hip TV show, and I'm supposed to ne this hip guy and I'm gonna go out there and act in a fairytale. These unbelievable things happen to people and the react to them sincerely, without cynicism and without the knowledge that they should be hipper than to believe in such things. That's the hippest thing I could do."

People still confused Duchovny with Mulder. "That's mostly on the street," he says, "but they're a bunch of dumb assess." Duchovny has a deserved reputation for being droll and cutting. "Sometimes they confuse me with Scully -- They'll say, 'Yeah, big fan of the show.' Oh really? Then you should know that my character is not the woman."

Respect is a big issue for him - he always makes sure he's prepared for a role, and was pleased to find that Driver shares these values. "How else are you going to live your life if you're not going to respect your job and respect the people you work with? You're actuaklly going to show up with such lack of respect that you're going to inconvenience others while you get yourself ready. I don't like it."

While Gillian Anderson has recently given up smoking, Duchovny doesn't need to worry about his health - he's just completed a mini-triathlon. "It was do-able," he shrugs. "I could do it without training because I couldn't train for it really, so I just kind of did it."

Modest man. Still, he doesn't reveal all. He's just been tattooed on his ankle with his daughter's name. And a heart? "No." A skull? "No, youre not gonna guess it. It's not gonna work."

The truth is still out there.