At twenty-six years old, David Duchovny decided to switch from working on his doctoral thesis in literature to pursuing a career as an actor. He wanted to understand fictional characters from the inside out. Swiftly, he became a working actor, appearing in small roles in the early ’90s: Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, Beethoven, Twin Peaks, and as the honey-tongued host of the erotic series Red Shoe Diaries. He soon landed his most iconic role as Agent Fox Mulder in The X-Files, one of the rare shows that had popular success and developed a cult following. The show rolled out eleven seasons over twenty-five years, with several film adaptations. 

Duchovny has also starred in two seasons of the show Aquarius and seven seasons of Californication, which chronicles the life of a bitter, sexually motivated writer in Los Angeles. He has directed one film and appeared in quite a few others, but his success has continually occurred in television, a medium that keeps pace with his slow and subtle mode of acting. The pleasure of watching Duchovny accretes over time. It’s his awareness, not simply his dramatic actions, that reveals the depth of his performances.