David Duchovny

In December 1914 his ancestors were among 6,000 Jews who were forcibly removed from their homes by Ottoman police, violently expelled from Jaffa, and deported by ship to Egypt.

He is the son of Amram "Ami" Ducovny (1927–2003), a writer and publicist who worked for the American Jewish Committee, and Margaret "Meg" (née Miller), a school administrator and teacher.

He is the second son and the middle child of three children.

He has an elder brother, Daniel (b. 1956) and a younger sister, Laurie (b. 1966).

Duchovny's mother is a Scottish immigrant from Whitehills, Aberdeen, Scotland.

His father was Jewish, and his mother was Lutheran.

His father dropped the h in his last name to avoid the sort of mispronunciations he encountered while serving in the Army.

In the Polish language, duchowny means 'clergyman', and in the Ukrainian language it means 'spiritual'.

Duchovny's paternal grandfather was a Jewish emigrant from Berdychiv, Ukraine, and Duchovny's paternal grandmother was a Jewish emigrant from Congress Poland (now in Poland).

David William Duchovny (born August 7, 1960) is an American actor, writer, producer and musician.

Duchovny was born in New York City in 1960.

Duchovny attended The Collegiate School For Boys in Manhattan (where he was a classmate of John F. Kennedy Jr. ) from which he graduated as head boy in 1978.

He then attended Princeton University where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude in 1982 with an A.B. in English literature.

He was a member of Charter Club, one of the university's eating clubs.

In 1982, his poetry received an honorable mention for a college prize from the Academy of American Poets.

The title of his senior thesis was The Schizophrenic Critique of Pure Reason in Beckett's Early Novels.

He played junior varsity basketball at Princeton.

He earned a Master of Arts in English Literature from Yale University and subsequently began work on a Ph.D. that remains unfinished.

The title of his uncompleted doctoral thesis is Magic and Technology in Contemporary Fiction and Poetry.

Duchovny's great-great-grandfather and his family moved from Berdychiv, Ukraine, to Jaffa (then in the Ottoman Empire, now in Israel).

Duchovny appeared in an advertisement for Löwenbräu beer in 1987.

The next year he appeared in Working Girl (1988).

He had a small recurring role as Denise Bryson, a transgender DEA agent on the series Twin Peaks and played the narrator and host in the Showtime softcore erotica TV series Red Shoe Diaries.

His film work includes minor roles in the coming-of-age black comedy Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991), and the family comedy Beethoven (1992).

Also in 1992, he played Roland Totheroh in the biographical comedy-drama Chaplin with Robert Downey Jr. In the 2000's, he starred in Return to Me with Minnie Driver (2000), Evolution with Orlando Jones (2001), Connie and Carla with Nia Vardalos (2004), House of D with Robin Williams (2004), and The Joneses with Demi Moore (2009).

In 1992, he played the role of Rollie Totheroh in the biographic film Chaplin, directed by Richard Attenborough and based on the life of Charlie Chaplin.

In 1992 he had a small role in the family film Beethoven.

He portrayed FBI agent Fox Mulder on the television series The X-Files (1993–2002, 2016–2018) and played the writer Hank Moody on the television series Californication (2007–2014), both of which have earned him Golden Globe awards.

In 1993, Duchovny began starring in the science fiction series The X-Files, as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder, a conspiracy theorist who believed his sister had been abducted by aliens.

The show evolved into a cult hit and became one of The Fox Network's first major television hits.

According to The X-Files creator Chris Carter, Duchovny turned out to be one of the best-read people he knew.

After getting the role, Duchovny thought the show would not last for long or make as much impact as it did.

Executive producer Frank Spotnitz called Duchovny "amazingly smart".

Spotnitz further stated that Duchovny was behind some of the main characteristic ideas behind Mulder.

Also in 1993, Duchovny was cast alongside Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis, in the Dominic Sena-directed thriller Kalifornia.

Duchovny appeared in both X-Files films, the 1998 science fiction-thriller of the same name and the supernatural-thriller The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008).

During The X-Files run, in between the fifth and sixth seasons, Duchovny co-starred alongside Gillian Anderson in a 1998 film also titled The X-Files that continued the storyline.

He remained with the series until leaving the show in 2001, partly because of a contract dispute that occurred after season seven finished filming.

He executive-produced and starred in the historically based cop drama Aquarius (2015–2016).

Duchovny holds a B.A. in English literature from Princeton University, and a M.A. in English literature from Yale University, and has since published five books: Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale (2015), Bucky F*cking Dent (2016), Miss Subways (2018), Truly Like Lightning (2021), and The Reservoir (2022).