David Duchovny Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by David Duchovny:
Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within.
~David Duchovny
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I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels.
~David Duchovny
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If my work was good enough, I would never have to do publicity.
~David Duchovny
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I never, ever, ever cook. And I would never eat anything I might cook.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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I don't need my phone to play me music. I need it to be a phone and an e-mail thing.
~David Duchovny
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I mean, you always want everybody to pat you on the back and tell you you're wonderful every time you do something; I think that's human nature.
~David Duchovny
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I do not think that Mulder trusts any one other than Scully. He s very solitary. She is the only one who takes him seriously. I don t know if they re in love. In a way, their relationship is deeper than that, because they cannot live without each other.
~David Duchovny
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Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it.
~David Duchovny
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I love the Lower East Side.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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I don't think I'd ever be cruel to an animal.
~David Duchovny
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I drive an electric car.
~David Duchovny
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People always love and respect characters who speak the truth, even if the truth hurts.
~David Duchovny
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I enjoy trying to figure out the best way to compliment the picture and not overpower it.
~David Duchovny
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One of the great things about doing series television is the guest actors that you can have come on and play around with.
~David Duchovny
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I've made so many mistakes. But it is my feeling that you learn from failures, so I welcome them as often as I can.
~David Duchovny
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I think the real heroic teachers are the ones who work with kids, like my mom and my sister do.
~David Duchovny
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I think there are ways in which shows can pop their heads up a little bit in the morass of everything you can watch.
~David Duchovny
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People think celebrities don't have to worry about human things like sickness and death and rent. It's like you've traveled to this Land of Celebrity, this other country.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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I had to work in one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world for almost three weeks. Pity me.
~David Duchovny
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My entire life has been an attempt to get back to the kind of feelings you have on a field. The sense of brotherhood, the esprit de corps, the focus - there being no past or future, just the ball. As trite as it sounds, I was happiest playing ball.
~David Duchovny
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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.'
~David Duchovny
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At one time there were voiceover artists, now there are celebrity voiceover artists. It's unfortunate because these people need the money less than the voiceover artist.
~David Duchovny
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I'm very proud of my Scottish blood.
~David Duchovny
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I had a fear that I'd be typecast, but I don't really have that fear anymore.
~David Duchovny
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If you have Darwin, Christ and Nietzsche, they're all going to talk at once. You need somebody who listens.
~David Duchovny
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I'm not really a gamer.
~David Duchovny
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I lost my virginity when I was 14. And I haven't been able to find it.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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I've turned down jobs because I've said, 'Honestly, I can't find my way in. I can't do it. I love you, as a director. I think the script is good. You deserve better than I think I can do.'
~David Duchovny
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I just spend my money on the essentials. Just basically food and shelter.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say.
~David Duchovny
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There's nothing wrong with acknowledging the panoply of life's rich experience.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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You're raising a kid and you give it food and shelter and, most importantly, you give it the feeling that it's special. I think people react to celebrities like that - I mean, they treat celebrities like children.
~David Duchovny
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I think patience is a skill and I wish I had it.
~David Duchovny
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Games, by nature, have more plot options and non-linear qualities than TV and film.
~David Duchovny
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You become tyrannized by this notion that women must not only be treated equally, but they must never fail.
~David Duchovny
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I don't believe in a conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life.
~David Duchovny
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I feel like I came to acting late in a way.
~David Duchovny
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I feel I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it's not natural to me. So I don't take it for granted... What I think is my natural ability - which is writing - I think I totally take that for granted.
~David Duchovny
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I'd love to direct more.
~David Duchovny
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A lot of times passion projects or films are difficult to make because they don't have proven directors attached to them.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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In terms of likeability, that's something that I don't think about as an actor when I approach a role.
~David Duchovny
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For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids.
~David Duchovny
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When I grew up, I was in Manhattan the whole time. But my kids have been all over the world.
~David Duchovny
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Humility is considered an un-masculine quality.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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I'm half Jewish, half Scottish. It's hard for me to buy anything.
~David Duchovny
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I really enjoy taking an outdoor shower.
~David Duchovny
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In the U.S., oddly, we have images of men as arrogant and aggressive.
~David Duchovny
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I don't like watching people work if they're making art.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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Every day I try to do breathing exercises, meditation, and yoga. These things sound awfully cliche, but they help me slow down and try to point to a truth.
~David Duchovny
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One of the scary things is that, when you're a kid, you look at your dad as the man who has no fear. When you're an adult, you realize your father had fear, and that you have it, too.
~David Duchovny
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On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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Without whining and without making myself a tragic figure, there is no replacement for the loss of your privacy. It's a huge sacrifice.
~David Duchovny
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It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.
~David Duchovny
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My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do.
~David Duchovny
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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?
~David Duchovny
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I never thought about the actors on television or film, like what kind of life they had.
~David Duchovny
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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?
~David Duchovny
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Willie Mays was the best ever. When I was in college I once made a catch like the one Mays made over his head. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night I think about it. It still makes me warm.
~David Duchovny
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I think we all choose our style from the ether and whatever is out there.
~David Duchovny
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Fame does lead to money, which I don't have a close relationship with. I'm the kind of guy who never sees the money - it all goes somewhere else. I don't understand it, I don't like to deal with it. I have a fear of not having it, because I grew up without it.
~David Duchovny
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Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.
~David Duchovny
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I don't know how anybody gets better at anything aside from doing it.
~David Duchovny
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The key is to get to know people and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we trust people to be who we want them to be - and when they're not, we cry.
~David Duchovny
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Just like every show has a tone, every show has different people on it playing different games. I don't say 'game' in a pejorative sense, I just mean, these are different stories that we tell ourselves when we go to work.
~David Duchovny
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I'll instinctively know that I identify with a character.
~David Duchovny
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Whenever somebody says they need an angle for their story I always fear that they've got an idea and they want me to fit into it or they want me to come up with an idea myself or I'm supposed to be more revealing than I've been, and to me it just sounds like something I don't want to do.
~David Duchovny
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I like my computer. But I don't know how to use it as well as the 10-year-old daughter.
~David Duchovny
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I think Polanski's an amazing director.
~David Duchovny
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When I started getting notoriety it was cheesy to appear in a commercial.
~David Duchovny
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I'm kind of stupid when it comes to gadgets.
~David Duchovny
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I think people are always trying to demystify whatever acting is, so they want to know what your method is.
~David Duchovny
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I wouldn't succeed at musical theater.
~David Duchovny
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'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.
~David Duchovny
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I always dreamt of being a basketball player. A dream that only I believed in.
~David Duchovny
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Actually, I have an interest in finishing my Ph.D., but I just know I never will.
~David Duchovny
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I enjoy comedy and I hope that people enjoy watching me do it.
~David Duchovny
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You can't control your mind. Why would you want to?
~David Duchovny
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Most journalists expect me to answer all their questions about aliens and spaceships.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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It's not someone else's responsibility to honor my marriage. It's my responsibility.
~David Duchovny
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Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them.
~David Duchovny
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I think of myself as more of a comic person. I don't know about a comic actor.
~David Duchovny
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Women's fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It's men's way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they're actually tied up.
~David Duchovny
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What makes me mad is arrogance, pretension, putting on airs.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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Sex is great until you die, but it's never as great as it was when you were a kid, when it was a mystery.
~David Duchovny
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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
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I still feel like I haven't grown up.
~David Duchovny
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In high school and college, I was an athlete.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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I don't want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.
~David Duchovny
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The happiest moment of my life was probably when my daughter was born.
~David Duchovny
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One of the nice things about acting is that it allows you to open up to the other people within you.
~David Duchovny
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I'm always trying to perfect the romantic comedy, though.
~David Duchovny
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I don't make decisions based on money.
~David Duchovny
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I love animals and I love working with them because they don't lie.
~David Duchovny
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I'm trying to protect what I advertise. That's my stance on any kind of self-expression.
~David Duchovny
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I'm turning into a stricter dad.
~David Duchovny
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'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.
~David Duchovny
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In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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I love dogs. They live in the moment and don't care about anything except affection and food. They're loyal and happy. Humans are just too damn complicated.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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I may be learning guitar, but I'll never be able to sing.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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Approaching a part or thinking about taking a part, I never think, 'Is that person like me?'
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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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.
~David Duchovny
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'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.
~David Duchovny
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There are certain things I learned when I first started learning about acting, to try and place the character physically and emotionally. And the way you place them emotionally is often with humor.
~David Duchovny
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