Given his years as Fox Mulder on The X-Files, we can't imagine anything would scare David Duchovny, but it turns out that the star was pretty worried when his daughter, West, followed him into showbusiness.
West, 27, has recently been entertaining fans in The Five-Star Weekend, where she plays Aubrey, but she has a whole host of other credits, including A Mouthful of Air, Linoleum, Saint X and Painkiller. She even starred alongside her father in Soapbox and in The X-Files, appearing in the show's final-ever episode.
However, speaking to Closer back in 2022, David admitted that he was nervous about his daughter entering the industry. "My daughter West is acting. She majored in English in college, just like I did," he told the publication.
"I'm always scared of anybody I love getting into acting, especially a child of mine, but I think she has a toughness to her that can help her survive."
In the same interview, the actor said that his son, Kyd, had no interest in fame, revealing: "My son is a naturally gifted, funny guy. He's a storyteller in that way, but has shown no interest in acting."
Speaking to HELLO! back in April about appearing in a film with West, David said: "I had a wonderful time. You'd have to ask West if she had a wonderful time too, but it really was really a once in a lifetime experience. It was a gift, and speaking of agency, I just thought, 'oh wow, I'm working on a movie that I wrote and I get to work with my daughter and these are great things'.
© Getty Images for Tribeca Festiva"There were certain kinds of tensions in my mind going into it, but they were all ego-oriented of 'I don't want my daughter to see me fail,' or 'I don't want my daughter to see me being a bad actor,' or something like that.
"But they're all very small minded things that in the actual doing of it went away very quickly."
Who is West Duchovny?
West is the daughter of David and his first wife, Téa Leoni. The actress prefers to go by West, which is her middle name, instead of using her forename, Madelaine.
Speaking to Women's Wear Daily in 2023, West confessed that she initially didn't care for acting. "I didn't really care about it," she explained. "It was my parents' thing. People were asking me about it a lot, and that made me be like, 'Why are you asking me this? That's not my life'."
© WireImageHowever, while studying pre-med in college, she helped a friend out by starring in her play, and she was bitten by the acting bug. The star said: "And it was just like, 'oh no'. I had never felt that way about anything. I never loved anything I had tried so effortlessly.
"I felt like I had been pushing myself to love school and love academics. But [acting] felt like the first thing that I wanted to commit to really getting to know and doing."
© SXSW Conference & Festivals viaWest also confessed that her mother, Téa, had her worries about the star starting her journey. She explained: "My mom definitely was trepidatious. She grew up in the industry; that was very difficult for women. That we are now talking about more and changing, slowly but surely, and I'm her daughter, and she was scared for me to enter that world."
