The X-Files series closed shop back in 2002, but don’t expect the new movie I Want to Believe, to pick up where the show left off. “We don’t act like the six years didn’t happen,” confirms David Duchovny, who adds playfully, “which is great for me physically.”

It turns out the actor, who portrays smoldering Special Agent Fox Mulder in the franchise, never wanted to give up the character he played for nine seasons and in the 1998 film by the same name.

“I did have this hope that I would be able to play Mulder until I died in a way, until we died at the same time” the 47-year-old tells Hollywood.com. “By that I just mean that we got older and I didn’t have to adjust the guy and keep playing him as young as I was when I first started playing him, which was 15 years ago. So for me it is very fulfilling to at least do it in this incarnation, and whether or not I get to do it again I don’t know, but we don’t try to keep it the same.”

As for his costar Gillian Anderson, “she’s 15 years older too,” he jests.

On a more serious note, Duchovny says he kept in touch with his onscreen FBI partner via email after the TV show wrapped and she moved to England.

“We have this very weird close bond,” he explains. “When you work that much with somebody and go through the kind of insane life changes that we both went through at the same time – only having each other as standards. We’ll always have some kind of bond.”

The new film, due in theaters July 25, re-teams agents Mulder and Dana Scully (Anderson) for a thrill ride reminiscent of the “monster-of-the-week” episodes from the show’s earliest seasons.