Red Hot Right Now
Cosmopolitan, October 1, 1995
by James Grant
He's a bona-fide intellectual with an Ivy League pedigree, but thirty-five-year-old David Duchovny is better known for his buff bod than his ability to deliver a bon mot. As FBI agent Fox Mulder on Fox TV's critically acclaimed science-fiction show, X-Files (and the libidinous host of Showtime's Red Shoe Diaries), this handsome actor's powerful appeal is at once cerebral and sexual.
Recently, thousands of female fans who passionately discuss X-Files on the Internet were prompted to download pictures of this Princeton graduate and former Yale Ph.D. candidate after they saw his ultraconservative character emerge from a swimming pool — in the middle of a severe Vancouver winter — wearing nothing but a Speedo. "Oh, that was completely gratuitous, " Duchovny admits between sips of coffee at New York's Four Seasons Hotel. Running long fingers through his messy mop of sandy brown hair, he continues, "You rarely see a man wearing a Speedo on television, unless he's David
Hasselhoff. I thought it would be funny, since Agent Mulder ordinarily has a suit practically tattooed onto him."
This wasn't, however, the first time the actor let his assets show. Before tracking down werewolves, zombies, and assorted aliens on his current TV series, Duchovny appeared nude in a trio of films — Kalifornia, The Rapture, and New Year's Day. He readily admits he's comfortable flaunting his physique, but he does have limits: "I'm lucky enough to have an athletic body, and I work out, so being naked is fine. Sex scenes don't embarrass me, although there's a shot in The Rapture where you can actually see my…well, you know what I mean. I don' t feel the need to show them! They serve a wonderful function, but they're funny!"
Duchovny wasn't always this uninhibited. Growing up in New York City, he remembers being smart, studious, and most of all, shy. In third grade, he was accepted into the prestigious Collegiate School, after he'd previously been rejected in favor of a young applicant with more impressive family connections. "They gave my spot to John F. Kennedy, Jr.," he recalls with no discernible trace of bitterness.
The self-proclaimed wallflower overcame adolescent gawkiness in time to lose his virginity at age fourteen. "My buddy was twelve when he lost his, which I'm not condoning," he says. "For two long years, he taunted me, so I felt like the oldest virgin on the planet. I was anxious to get it over with. My virginity was a burden."
Many years later, at age twenty-seven, Duchovny says he suddenly " chucked academic aspirations and became completely swept up in the emotions of acting and the extraordinary things that, as an actor, I could do." This change of direction delighted neither his father (the author of several books, including the best-selling On With the Wind) nor his mother (an elementary-school administrator).
The beefy scholar's break came in 1989, when director Henry Jaglom cast him as a lothario in New Year's Day; the role included a nude love scene (with then-girlfriend, Maggie
Jakobson). His smoldering sensuality has been hard to hide ever since. Perhaps he's the only leading man in television history to ask a lensman not to make him look so good. "Well, I did say that to an X-Files cameraman," he admits, "but when I saw the finished episode, I felt like screaming, 'Hey! You weren't supposed to listen to me!'"
The show was in danger of cancellation last season…until it won the Golden Globe Award for best television drama, beating out heavyweight hits E.R. and NYPD Blue. Fox executives took note, the sci-fi series' small but fiercely loyal audience grew, and ratings climbed significantly.
For the past two years, Duchovny's been sharing his brains, brawn, and big-time success with Perrey Reeves, an actress who recently made an X-Files guest appearance. The couple doesn't cohabit, although the actor does shuttle back and forth between Vancouver, where he spends ten months a year shooting the series, and his girlfriend's Los Angeles home. "I do believe in monogamy," he declares. "Some people have it in their bones, it's their calling. But for others, including me, staying monogamous requires constant vigilance."
To be sure, Duchovny's as wild for women as they are for him. "I'm attracted to the primitive way a woman smells," he says. "It's the ultimate aphrodisiac, something each individual woman has that nobody else does."
Not surprisingly, he receives loads of fan mail, primarily from ladies. "I was getting a lot of great letters from two Australian women who were writing together," he recalls. "They sent me puzzle letters. Each one was a little jigsaw piece that didn't make sense by itself but, when pieced together with the others, became clear and quite explicit. But then the letters stopped," he says, sounding disappointed. "If you're reading Cosmo in Australia," Duchovny adds, "I'd really like you both to finish the letters."
Cosmopolitan — October 1, 1995
