Captain's log by RICHARD WALLACE
David Duchovny shares his views on babies, ghosts and Star Trek.
David Duchovny has just signed a new X Files deal - worth a cool £400,000 an episode - which will mean a definite return for Fox Mulder in the eighth series of the hit sci-fi show. But in between investigating whether the truth really is out there, our Dave, 39, found time to co-star with Minnie Driver in the heart transplant romantic comedy Return To Me.
Married to The Naked Truth star Tea Leoni, and with a 13-month-old daughter Madelaine, David is one of the few American stars with any sense of irony. Here he shares a couple of thoughts with us...
On being a sex symbol: "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 trash."
On life: "I feel like I should be a lot more grateful than I sometimes feel. I do. I feel very lucky to be living the life that I'm living right now. Yet, I'm still strangely unfulfilled at times with work and what I want to do. There are moments when I can sit back and think that things are OK - the wolf isn't at the door right now. But I don't want to be complacent. It's never over. Life is tricky and life is hard."
On being in character: "It's like when somebody says to you, 'Oh, your intensity during that scene was incredible'. And you say, 'I know, I had diarrhoea that day. I had to get off the set fast'."
On his pop star ambitions: "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."
On his love of books: "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 with those fantasies and stories of faraway places - they are saying now that computers are like that."
On Star Trek: "I identified with Kirk. And Scotty and Spock. Kirk because he was the hero, Spock because he was cool, and 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 didn't like anything, but if my parents liked a show, we got to watch it. I also grew up watching Benny Hill, Monty Python and The Two Ronnies."
On talk shows: "The first time I was supposed to be on Letterman I was bumped. I had flown all the way, but I was bumped because that blowhard Bill Cosby wouldn't get off the stage."
On Fox Mulder: "Not that I want to play Mulder forever but my fantasy is to take him into different eras of his life. Let's see how funny it is when he behaves the same at 53."
On Gillian Anderson: "I'm sure if we pass each other we wouldn't ignore each other. We don't run from trailer to trailer to exchange the news of the day. We have a successful working relationship and that's the best way to go about this job. Otherwise we'd hate each other by now."
On Return To Me: "It's a strange beast. It's definitely a melodrama. My wife's heart goes to this woman. It's an impossible happening. It's a fairytale, really. And like any fairytale, it has elements of horror and grotesque comedy. I think the tone that we're trying to get is kind of like a realistic fairytale."
On stardom: "You know what I hear when somebody says star? I hear pussy. I don't know why. 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. They're not being that nice to you. You're getting good service, sure, but in the end they're thinking pussy. I know they are. They're thinking, 'He couldn't take it if we didn't bring him those special chocolates'."
On ghosts: "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."
On three years of marriage: "You can relax a bit. You're not just sprinting any more - you're in the marathon. You change your pace. It's more comfortable."
On fatherhood: "I hope I'm a good dad. It seems to me a very difficult and very easy thing to do. But I would hope to be good."
On working with his wife Tea: "We talk about working together. I think she is like a Marilyn Monroe - in the sense that she stands above and beyond this time and will be somebody people will watch forever. I don't know if she wants to work that much to do that. But it's totally in her power."
