Both Nia Vardalos and David Duchovny are looking for successful vehicles to follow high-profile roles in My Big Fat Greek Wedding and The X Files respectively. Steve Pratt reports on the pair playing comedy lovers, where Vardalos is a woman playing a man playing a woman.

BOTH David Duchovny and Nia Vardalos have much to live up to. He's emerged from eight years searching for proof there's something out there as agent Fox Mulder in TV's The X Files. She's hot from the success of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the movie she wrote and starred in that became the highest grossing independent feature film in history.

Time will tell whether the new comedy Connie And Carla - with former stand up comedienne Vardalos again in the dual role of star and writer - can help them move on.

What's not in doubt is that this drag queen comedy is great fun as Connie and Carla (Vardalos and Toni Collette) pretend to be male to escape the bad guys. Duchovny is the romantic interest.

Before the slow-burning My Big Fat Greek Wedding took off, Vardalos was already being tapped for new projects. "Someone called and said, 'Have you written anything else?' At that point, I had Connie And Carla and a grocery list in the drawer," she recalls.

Duchovny liked the script, which he describes as a mix of the traditional and the original. He thinks comedy has got in a rut with There's Something About Mary movies. That movie is great, he adds, but he was attracted to her script which was both old-fashioned and sharp.

But he was denied the chance to put on drag, as he did as Denis/Denise Bryson in David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks. "I didn't want to make anyone insecure because I look fantastic in drag," he jokes.

"I was kind of pathetic. I told everyone I'd worn a dress. I even brought in the tape and played it just to show that I too could shave my legs for money. I missed it because it was a lot of fun."

Playing a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman brought its own problems for Vardalos. She usually writes about worlds with which she's familiar, but drag was all new to her and needed researching.

"I asked one of the drag queens why they did it and they said because it was the one night of the week they felt fabulous. Who couldn't relate to that? I kept asking questions and got a lot of advice from drag queens on the set."

She'd rather be called funny than pretty, she says, and was never the type of girl who dreamt of her wedding or Academy Award speech. The costume changed her. "The bust was so tight I couldn't put my own shoes on," she says.

"Walking across the set I felt so sexy. It was strange for me and lovely for my husband. Now I wear fishnet stockings and the redder the lipstick the happier I am. To find your inner sexiness, put on a pair of fishnet stockings."

Her feet have stayed on the ground despite the success and Oscar nomination that accompanied My Big Fat Greek Wedding. She categorises the roles offered to women as wife, mother, prostitute. Rather than complain, she's accepted that's the game and learnt how to play it.

"I do believe you only get one life and you might as well make it a happy one," she says.

Just as Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson plucked Vardalos from obscurity and backed My Big Fat Greek Wedding, she's now mentoring a female writer.

And she's not insisting on only playing star roles. "I always thought I would be a character actress. I wanted to be fifth banana on a TV show, have a good life and for people not to know my name," she explains. "When I got into Second City comedy theatre I realised there was power and benefit to writing my own material."

Duchovny doesn't feel it's his place to draw a line under The X-Files. "It was eight great years and now there are other things I want to do," he says.

"I don't do anything trying to get away from it or plug into any audience I may have through doing the show. For me, that's in the past. It's a reality of my public and creative life but not something I keep in mind when I make a decision or express myself in any other venue."

He reveals that he may not have finished with The X-Files as a second movie could well happen. He's willing to do it as are co-star Gillian Anderson, writer Chris Carter and the studio Fox. "When you have four major players in the enterprise wanting to do it, it will happen," he says.

* Connie And Carla (12A) opens in cinemas tomorrow.

Published: 10/06/2004