The worst thing a man can admit is 'I'm not 100 percent fulfilled by my family.' But it doesn't mean he doesn't love his family. I love my family, but I still want to work; I still want challenges. It took me a while to fall in love with the responsibility of family life, and it was a deep thing when I did.
— David Duchovny
My whole life, I've wanted things before I was ready. I was always pushing for the next job, the next success. I was so focused on achieving and the path that I was missing some great point about life.
I love the ocean, wide-open space and trees, but I'm not a gardener or anything like that. I think I may be, eventually. I was raised in the city, so I don't have that skill set, but my heart is more with the dirt than the concrete. It's an unrequited love with nature - a one-way love affair.
I feel like I came to acting late in a way. I was about 26 or 27, and it was imperative that I make a living right away, and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film.
Generally, I don't like to walk out of a movie. It's like a relationship - you want to see it to the end; otherwise, you won't know if you left early or not.
If you're smart, you'll always be humble. You can learn all you want, but there'll always be somebody who's never read a book who'll know twice what you know.
I never, ever, ever cook. And I would never eat anything I might cook.
I'd love to direct more.
I wouldn't succeed at musical theater.
It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say.
I've run into certain geniuses of individualism - they are very few and far between - who live their lives completely on their own terms; they are very powerful and have a great amount of happiness. We all should aspire to that.
I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels.
It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.
Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.
I mean, there's chemistry in life and there's acting chemistry. I'm not saying they're the same thing, but they're as mysterious.
I don't believe in a conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life.
I think we all choose our style from the ether and whatever is out there.
I won't look online. The whole fan thing makes me self-conscious, which is not to say I don't appreciate it or understand it. If Mickey Mantle were around, I'm sure I'd have a ton of questions to ask him that might make him uncomfortable. I get it. That doesn't mean it's not really awkward.
Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it. It's hard to be that quick and articulate in life. You've got to try to make it seem discovered, you know, not rehearsed.
It's always a mystery when you're going into a role - 'Here's your wife of 40 years and... action!' How do you create ease or chemistry or whatever is supposed to exist?
'The X-Files,' as I recall, we didn't know really what we were until the middle of the first year. You know, so if we'd been cancelled, you get cancelled before you mature into what it is you can actually be, which is too bad.
I don't like the idea of being eaten by a shark. I like to swim in the ocean, and I think much more about sharks than anyone should. I really resent the fact that my oceangoing experiences are ruined by 'Jaws.'
Privacy is something I have come to respect. I think when I was younger I wanted to tell everybody everything, because I thought I was so damn interesting. Then I heard the snoring.
I think Polanski's an amazing director.
You can go through life and actually speak your mind and do it in an articulate fashion and with a really intelligent point of view.
I don't think of myself as a TV actor. I think of myself as a film, television and Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway actor.
Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it.
In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before.
I enjoy comedy and I hope that people enjoy watching me do it.
I don't like watching people work if they're making art.
I love animals and I love working with them because they don't lie.
98% of the people in the world are harmless and wish you well, but it only takes one person who doesn't. That's what you're constantly on guard against.
I don't want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.
Humility is considered an un-masculine quality.
I'm constantly amazed by the ability a child has to show sympathy, to read emotions, to get to the heart of any situation. It's unfiltered and completely inspiring.
I wanted to write plays. I was at Yale graduate school at the time for English literature, not for acting... I liked the idea of collaboration, and I thought if I'm gonna write plays, I should learn something about speaking the lines that I might try to write.
'Duch' means spirit and 'ovny' is kind of the adjectival ending, so the word itself means spiritual. It's my father's name, obviously. He took the 'H' out because he was tired of people saying Duchovny, but he never did it legally. When my parents divorced, my mother, to my father, put the 'H' back in.
What strikes me is that 'XIII' looks like a movie. The shot making is movie-like, which is kind of fun - the kind of playful action movie shot making is pretty, is pretty good. What's also great about this game is its style and interesting story-line.
'Alien' is a great movie. So is 'Close Encounters.' But I'm not the guy who goes out to the science-fiction festival. '2001's good.
I'm half Jewish, half Scottish. It's hard for me to buy anything.
I don't mind close-ups, I like them, but they're kind of forceful - you see a lot, you get a lot of information in a close-up. There's less mystery.
In terms of likeability, that's something that I don't think about as an actor when I approach a role.
I don't need my phone to play me music. I need it to be a phone and an e-mail thing.
I never thought about the actors on television or film, like what kind of life they had.
I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.
Chemistry is really about two people who like to act together, I think. It's like tennis in the most cliched way. It's like if you hit the ball, they hit the ball back, and they don't hit it into the stands, and they don't put the ball in their pocket and walk off - and they don't argue with the umpire, you know?
I had a fear that I'd be typecast, but I don't really have that fear anymore.
I had to work in one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world for almost three weeks. Pity me.
Without whining and without making myself a tragic figure, there is no replacement for the loss of your privacy. It's a huge sacrifice.
I enjoy trying to figure out the best way to compliment the picture and not overpower it.
