David William Duchovny, forever known to believers as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on the long-running cult TV classic The X-Files, was born in New York City on August 7, 1960. Duchovny went to Princeton AND Yale, before starting a career as a beer model.

Most people know Duchovny as conspiracy theorist Fox Mulder, and perhaps as Hank Moody of Showtime’s Californication. That’s a damn shame, because Duchovny has had some much more colorful roles in his day. 

In the second season of David Lynch’s bizarre, groundbreaking Twin Peaks, David Duchovny made his triumphant television debut as Dennis “Denise” Bryson, a cross-dressing DEA agent. From there, he became the host and narrator of The Red Shoe Diaries on Showtime – a long-running series of softcore pornography. 

Naturally, with all these kinks he was a perfect fit to play an FBI agent, especially one inhabiting a world as twisted as that of The X-Files. Duchovny’s turn as Mulder started in 1993 and propelled both his career and that of the then-new Fox Network to great heights – Duchovny remains a geek hero. 

In 2005 David returned to Showtime to star as troubled writer Hank Moody in Californication, Hank has trouble saying “no” to anything, including sex – a vice Duchovny himself copped to in 2008 when he checked into rehabilitation for sex addiction.

On his birthday, raise a toast to science fiction icon, sometime-director and all-around handsome-guy (voted into 1996’s 50 most beautiful People!) with a cocktail named for his most famous alter ego – the Fox Mulder. A few of these and you may be seeing little green men which ironically is also the title of the first episode of the second season of the The X-Files.