David Duchovny
Duchovny in 2012, photo by kathclick/Bigstock.com
Birth Name: David William Duchovny
Place of Birth: New York City, New York, U.S.
Date of Birth: August 7, 1960
Ethnicity:
*Ashkenazi Jewish (father)
*Scottish (mother)
David Duchovny is an American actor, writer, director, producer, singer, and songwriter. He has starred in The X-Files and the films Return to Me and Evolution, among many other roles.
He is the son of Margaret (Miller), a teacher, and Amram Ducovny, a writer and publicist. David’s father was Jewish, of Ukrainian Jewish and Russian Jewish descent, and was a writer and a publicist for the American Jewish Committee. David’s mother was a Lutheran emigrant from Scotland, who was raised in a small fishing village.
David has two children with his former wife, actress and producer Téa Leoni.
David’s paternal grandfather was Moshe/Morris Duchovny (the son of Abraham Duchovny and Dobe/Dora Kantin). Moshe was a Jewish emigrant, from Berdychiv, now in Ukraine, and part of the Russian Empire when David’s grandfather left. Moshe was a playwright, novelist, and journalist.
David’s paternal grandmother was Hannah Julia Fiskoff (the daughter of Jacob Fiskoff and Esther Sterling). Hannah was a Polish Jewish immigrant.
Sources: Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak on the birthplace of David’s paternal grandfather, Moshe/Morris Duchovny – http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Interviews with David Duchovny – http://duchovny.net
http://gothamist.com
Genealogy of David Duchovny (focusing on his father’s side) – https://www.geni.com
always thought he was russian or ukrainian.
I loved him on The X-Files and Californication.
Why is Lutheran a part of his ethnicity? I may be behind, but did that religion become an ethnicity? Confuzzled.
I heard his father changed there surname to something else when he moved to America.But David changed choose to change it back to Duchovny that`s good.