These ‘Dumb’ Celebrities Are Actually Really Smart

David Duchovny Has a Master’s Degree From Yale

Photo by Showtime

For millennials, David Duchovny isn’t as recognized for his role in The X Files. Instead, he’s hailed as the boozy writer and social dope, Hank Moody in Californication. If you’ve ever seen the show, you can’t really blame yourself for thinking that Duchovny might be a little bit of a dunce too. He isn’t.

He graduated with a BA in English Literature from Princeton University before earning his Master’s from Yale. Wanting to become a screenwriter, he thought of acting as research. “I thought, ‘Well, if I’m going to write things that are going to be performed by actors, then it’s probably helpful for me to know something about what that’s like.” Little did he know he would drop his Ph.D. to act full time.