Mr and Mrs David Duchovny's Sex-files

Sunday Mirror, Jul 19, 1998

Unlike a lot of married couples, David Duchovny and Tea Leoni never have any long silences at breakfast. As they crunch their cornflakes, they argue about which of their films is going to be the first to take pounds 100 million at the box office.

It makes a change from squabbling about who made that dent in the car. But of course it's the sort of table talk that could only happen in Hollywood.

The X-Files star and his beautiful wife both have new movies. Tea (pronounced Tee-yuh) stars with Morgan Freeman and Robert Duvall in the sci-fi thriller, Deep Impact, playing a White House correspondent who reports on a comet that is on a collision course with Earth. David is taking his TV character FBI Agent Fox Mulder to the big screen, co- starring with Gillian Anderson in the highly-secretive The X-Files Movie, due out here on August 21.

Now David and Tea are constantly teasing each other about which one will become a blockbuster first. "I'd hate to have to rub it in her face," David jokes. "But we're gonna make more money than her." Lean, brooding David, 37, and lanky, bubbly Tea, 32, are Hollywood's latest hot charismatic couple, particularly since they've moved into their new pounds 1.8 million, home, complete with pool and stairway to the beach in Malibu.

David's five-year exile in Vancouver, British Columbia, where the TV version of The X-Files was filmed, is over and Tea's given up her smaller Los Angeles pad which was also by the ocean. "Why would anyone live up in the hills waiting for the big earthquake to hit so your house falls down on you?" she muses.

But any famous couple who marry in Hollywood still have to endure a landslide of cynicism. They only got married for the publicity... it was a good career move... and so on.

David is keenly aware of this. "Being public people, nobody wants to believe that there is any kind of a validity or innocence to it," he says. "There are people wanting to make up reasons for why you are together."

A part of him wants time to pass quickly to prove they are wrong. "You want the history so you can say, 'OK, now we've been married for five years. Hah hah'."

David's racy past didn't faze Tea in the least. With a year of marriage behind them, Tea says, "David was accused by some of the Press of being a sex addict, which I always found very exciting - and I found out it wasn't true.

"Men are like bulls. They gotta get the new cow. Maybe you've got to get the bull after he's had a lot of cows, so you might just be the last new one. I think David got a pretty good cow!" she jokes. "And, you know, monogamy is a powerful thing. I think the intimacy grants you greater, screaming orgasms."

Not all their wild plans have been successful however. Tea reveals that when they tried making love in a sauna, "I was shaking and dehydrated afterwards. We were ill for about 24 hours. How stupid is that?"

David and Tea met six years ago on a split interview for American TV's The Tonight Show.

"It's sort of a barbaric tradition," Tea explains. "If you're not quite famous enough you have to go to lunch and show them that you've got something. Normally, you do it one-on-one, you and the producers from the show. But they asked if I wouldn't mind splitting it with another actor. I said, "Yeah, that's okay, no problem. I'd love to', thinking it couldn't get any more awful.

"I asked who it was and they told me. 'Oh, good,' I said. 'Whoever.' I don't remember much of the lunch actually. I think it was one of the worst lunches of my life - and not because of David. It was because of the producers. Anyway, we left that lunch and didn't see each other for five years."

Then, in January 1997 their mutual agent Risa Shapiro suggested to them both that they had a great deal in common and would enjoy a date together.

What was it that inspired the match-making? "I think we're both cerebral characters trapped inside very vivacious, wild, creatively twisted souls," says Tea. "We were both born and raised in New York City - and we're both athletic."

Until then Tea had never even seen The X-Files. But after three weeks of telephone conversations with David, who was working in Vancouver, she agreed to a date in Los Angeles.

After that initial encounter, their courtship proper began. They would sneak off to romantic restaurants like Giorgio Malibu, where the chef recalls that they particularly enjoyed the lobster ravioli and pappardelle with porcini and veal sauce, which, you must admit has more of an intimacy about it than a burger and fries.

Then, according to Tea, they made out to the romantic vibes of her favourite song, Ready For Love by Bad Company. Thereafter things moved quicker than an alien spaceship on afterburner.

After a four-month courtship, he said, "Will you marry me?" as Tea was putting away some shoes in a cupboard. They were married on May 6 - three days after The X-Files finished shooting for the season - by Episcopal minister Craig Townsend in a 20-minute ceremony in the garden of Grace Church School in Manhattan. It was a place with sharp associations for David. He went to school there and his mother, Margaret, still works there as an administrator.