Duchovny has the looks, the wit, the haircut. And he plays Mulder, a true believer in extraterrestrials and government cover-ups, with an understated intensity that is magnetic.
The character single-mindedly probes unexplained cases -- X files -- the FBI and certain shadowy government figures would rather he and fellow agent Dana Scully (costar Gillian Anderson) drop.
No "Blue" sex scenes for our hero; it's all nerve-jangling alien encounters, mixed in with immortal killers and science gone badly awry.
There is a tantalizing trace of chemistry between Mulder and the lovely Scully in the Fox Broadcasting Co. series, airing at 9 p.m. EST Fridays, but producer Chris Carter has vowed not to exchange chills for romance.
Playing a man whose work is his passion is a turnabout for Duchovny, who racked up his share of sexy scenes in movies pre-"X-Files."
He was a sweet-talking bounder in "Julia Has Two Lovers," a swinger who gets religion in "The Rapture," and a cuckolded (but not sexually deprived) architect in Showtime's "The Red Shoe Diaries."
Duchovny's most recent film was "Kalifornia," in which he played a writer making a dangerous foray into the realm of murder -- with a comely girlfriend, of course.
Given the clever plots and sharp writing of "The X-Files," the actor is willing to take a dramatic cold shower for now. Besides, he says, it's a refreshing change.
"I was kind of happy to play a character that didn't have women register at all on his radar," Duchovny said in a call from Vancouver, British Columbia, where the series is filmed. "I take the energy that another character might have directed toward women and direct it toward UFOs."
Or, he suggests wryly, viewers can come up with their own off-screen scenarios: "You can just imagine what happens in between cases: When I'm not chasing UFOs, I'm chasing skirt."
Duchovny, 33, a native New Yorker, didn't start chasing an acting career early in life. He was on an impressive academic path, attending such swank private schools as Collegiate in Manhattan.
"I was a scholarship kid. It was an introduction into a different world," he said. "I remember going to visit a friend for the first time and seeing the elevator opened up into his apartment, which was wild. I'd only seen elevators open into hallways."
Following ability more than inspiration, Duchovny earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton and a master's in English literature at Yale, where he prepared for a teaching career in the Ph.D. program.
"I enjoyed reading, I enjoyed writing. It was pretty much because I hadn't found anything that moved me, and this was something I could do and I liked in a tepid kind of a way as a career," he said.
He began acting in off-Broadway plays to help him develop as a film and theater writer. But the performance, not just the play, turned out to be the thing.
Acting "is where I can be a full human being, a full emotional person, and have none of the dire consequences that you can have in life," he observed. "You don't have to go to jail when you kill someone."
Duchovny left Yale in 1987, moving to California about two years later. Movies were now his goal.
"I don't know why. I wasn't obsessed with actors," he said. "I was a sports fanatic, really. Acting gave me a sense of team that I hadn't had for a while, one of the things I liked about it."
A TV series wasn't in Duchovny's plan, but he was impressed by the pilot script for "The X-Files." He also figured the show, and his involvement, would be short-lived.
"I didn't see that you could do a show about aliens every week," he said. "Little did I know there were other things in store." The series, lavished with critical praise, already has been renewed for next season.
What's ahead as the first year winds up? Tough times for Mulder, Duchovny hints.
"I would look for some big things to happen in the last few episodes, some trouble for Mulder. ... I think they're going to try to shut him down," he said.
Duchovny has had his own problems on the action-heavy show: he's been cut, burned and suffered a separated shoulder in the course of filming. But the actor, who's single, also came away with a roommate to keep him company in Vancouver.
"Hey, don't bite the suit," he says, interrupting himself in mid-sentence. The attacker is a puppy, Blue, the offspring of a dog that appeared in an earlier episode.
"She's a foot-licker," he says affectionately of his new pet. And they claim there's no room for love on "The X-Files."