I grew up in a lower middle-class family in New York and had the fear of God put in me to do well by my mother. She was from a small town in Scotland and the only way out of her situation was education. I worked my ass off to do well, got As, and was good at sports, so I ended up being head boy, which I know makes me sound like a brown nose, but that’s not actually how it was.
If I’d made the grade in my school choir my life might have been different. I went to a church school after third grade called Grace Church school in New York. My friends said: “Everybody gets in and they pay you and they give you those golf tournament-sized cheques, too.” I auditioned but didn’t make it. It was a fork in the road moment. I was like, “Fuck the choir. Fuck music. I’m going to be an actor.”
JFK’s son John was my classmate in the freshman year of high school. We once took a school trip to visit the White House – I think Gerald Ford must have been president at the time. The lady taking the tour kept saying, “I believe we have a very special guest with us today, the son of a former president,” but we were slick kids, so we just said, “What the fuck are you talking about?” We guarded him.
Being the middle child made me a conciliatory person. I’m a mediator. I like to try to get people to get along, which is a good trait for a human being but not necessarily a good trait for an actor. I’ve always been comfortable observing, which has come through later in my life with my writing, but being an actor, you need to access the responsive and impulsive parts of your brain.
Starring in The X-Files wasn’t just any kind of celebrity, it was global recognition, and it was strange. It felt big. Unprecedented. I liked certain parts of it, then you realise it’s insane. Any room you walk into changes.
Fame waxes and wanes. Eventually, it’s easier to put yourself back out there. But when the spotlight is less intense a little bit of a death happens. A part of you can’t help feeling, “Have I done something wrong? Have I fucked up? Am I not as interesting any more?”
There’s no sense that my daughter, West, becoming an actor is in any way fulfilling any dreams of her parents. We didn’t groom her to be an actor. It wasn’t like, “We want you to go into the family business.” It’s completely her passion.
There’s nothing good about divorce, except surviving it. When you get past it you can be friends, raise your kids the best you can together, but you can’t sugar coat that process. It’s tough for everyone.
I still dip in and out of therapy, but at some point I felt like I understood certain things well enough. Knowledge or understanding was not necessarily the key to happiness. There was something else missing.
I care what certain people think about me. I care what my kids think. We have a very fraught relationship. The parent-child relationship is not rational. It’s not based on whether or not I’m a good person. It’s based on a lot of other intangible things.
I’m never going to be like, “Hey, I’m a fantastic guy.” I’m always going to be a work in progress, muddling my way through.
David Duchovny plays at the Cadogan Hall on 8 and 10 November (cadoganhall.com)
