David William Duchovny (born August 7, 1960) is an American actor. He has won Golden Globe awards for his work as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files and as Hank Moody on Californication.

Duchovny was born in New York City, New York, the son of Margaret "Meg" (née Miller), a school administrator and teacher, and Amram Ducovny (1927-2003), a writer and publicist who worked for the American Jewish Committee. Duchovny's paternal grandparents were Russian Jews and his mother is a Lutheran immigrant from Scotland. His father dropped the "h" in his surname because of frequent mispronunciations of the name. Duchovny's siblings are Daniel and Laurie Duchovny.

Duchovny first attended Grace Church School, and for high school attended The Collegiate School For Boys; both are in Manhattan. He graduated from Princeton University in 1982. He was a member of the Charter Club, one of the university's eating clubs. In 1982 his poetry received an honorable mention for a college prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the title of his senior thesis was The Schizophrenic Critique of Pure Reason in Beckett's Early Novels. Duchovny played a season of junior varsity basketball, as a shooting guard, and also center field for the varsity baseball team.