David William Duchovny /dʊˈkʌvni/ (born August 7, 1960) is an American actor, writer, producer, director, novelist, and singer-songwriter. He is known for playing FBI agent Fox Mulder on the television series The X-Files and writer Hank Moody on the television series Californication, both of which have earned him Golden Globe awards.
Duchovny appeared in both X-Files films, the 1998 science fiction-thriller of the same name and the supernatural-thriller The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008). He executive-produced and starred in the historically based cop drama Aquarius (2015–16). Duchovny earned a A.B. in English literature from Princeton University, and an M.A. in English literature from Yale University, and has since published three books, Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale (2015), Bucky F*cking Dent (2016) and Miss Subways (2018).
Duchovny was born in New York, in 1960. He is the son of Margaret "Meg" (née Miller), a school administrator and teacher, and Amram "Ami" Ducovny (1927–2003), a writer and publicist who worked for the American Jewish Committee. Duchovny's mother is a Scottish Presbyterian emigrant from Aberdeen, Scotland. His father was Jewish; Duchovny's paternal grandfather was a Jewish emigrant from Berdychiv, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), and Duchovny's paternal grandmother was a Jewish emigrant from Russian Poland (now in Poland). His father dropped the h in his last name to avoid the sort of mispronunciations he encountered while serving in the Army.