No Wonder He's Called Fox

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David Duchovny

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But Duchovny's willingness to play snotty on Larry Sanders hints at more than merely the actor stretching his range. This is a star who obviously enjoys the subtle absurdities of fame, who can put some intellectual distance between his life and his public image. Aiming all that heavy lit-crit artillery at himself, he's capable of deconstructing the text of his own celebrityhood. Which is how one ends up in a health-food restaurant listening to him quote a Roland Barthes essay on the effects of photography on its subjects.

''At least I think it was Roland Barthes,'' he says, biting into one of Yam's yams. ''He wrote that the camera eroticizes whatever it looks at, just by making it the focus of its gaze. Being photographed gives you a certain energy in other people's eyes, a certain buzz. I'm the focus of millions of eyes every Friday night because the camera is photographing me. That changes the way people see me. But it has nothing to do with me — it has to do with the camera.

''That's the thing about fame. Ultimately you realize that you're being appreciated for something that doesn't have that much to do with you. So it's not satisfying,'' he says. ''It's perfume. Nothing goes inside. It doesn't give you anything deep or meaningful. You get Knick tickets — that's about it.

''It's like the Internet stuff — it's flattering, but there are probably some things that I just shouldn't know about. Being on TV and having so many people see you makes you self-conscious enough as it is. There are two things I don't want to do in my spare time. One is talk about The X-Files and the other is think about how people are perceiving me.''

''Do I sound like I'm complaining?'' he asks, forking into another yam. ''Publicists are always trying to make me sound happier in interviews. My manager is convinced that people will resent me if I don't sound totally thrilled with my life.''

Certainly, Duchovny has lots to be thrilled about — and knows it ''The odds of being on a hit TV show are remote,"'' he says, ''but what are the odds of being on a hit TV show that's any good?''). Still, his life isn't perfect. For starters, he's in Vancouver 10 months a year, working an average of 14 hours a day. That makes his relationship with Reeves, who lives in Los Angeles, something of a strain. ''There's really no way to talk about it in conventional terms,'' he says. ''It's not a conventional relationship. How could it be? We live in different cities.'' (Reeves' vampire, not incidentally, is the only X-Files babe Agent Mulder has ever taken to bed — although his relationship with Scully has more undercurrents than the Bermuda Triangle.)

Then there's the boredom issue. Duchovny has just renegotiated a new contract — for a reported salary of $100,000 per episode — to do five more years of the show, which is a long time to be chasing little green men around western Canada. The series' summer hiatus is only two months long, which means outside movie projects are tough to schedule (although an X-Files film is in the planning stages). To keep his brain from completely spinning down, Duchovny pens poetry in his trailer (he even whips up a William Carlos Williams homage on the spot: ''My Speedo/So much depends upon a red Speedo/Covered with rain'') and lately has been contributing story lines to the series (last year's clones episode was his idea). Still, living to X-tremes can get dull. ''Being offered story lines and directing,'' he says, ''it reminds me of playing with my dog. I'll give him a choice between a tennis ball or a Frisbee — whatever it takes to keep him involved.''

Eventually, of course, Duchovny will have to investigate that ultimate unsolved mystery — whether there's life after The X-Files. Will his fans ever let Fox Mulder go? Or will Duchovny turn into Bill Shatner: The Next Generation, doomed to tour X-Files conventions for all eternity?

''It's weird. To me, the show is like a wave and I'm on top of it looking down. And right now it's a biiiig wave, so sometimes it's scary. But mostly I'm just detached from it all.'' Still, he's not worried. ''I feel I've got 10 more years of playing the guy. When I'm 45, I'll start thinking about what else I want to do.''

He gets up to leave Yam's. ''Sometimes when I'm swimming,'' he says, ''I think that maybe someday I'll put my red Speedo up for auction. Or maybe I'll donate it to the Smithsonian. They can stuff it with two plums and a gherkin and put it on display.''

Yeah, but would the gherkin be to the left or the right?