When Angelina Jolie was coming up in the 1990s, she really did become a very big deal pretty quickly. She won three Golden Globe awards in consecutive years (for the George Wallace miniseries, Gia and Girl, Interrupted), she won an Oscar at the age of 24 and she had over a dozen credits by her 25th birthday in 2000. It wasn’t overnight success, but from the span of Hackers in 1995 through Girl, Interrupted in 1999, she became a “movie star” pretty quickly. In that four-year span, she took some smaller roles, supporting parts in bigger actors’ vehicles. One of those films was Playing God. I saw that many years ago but I don’t remember much about it other than Angelina was in it and David Duchovny was the lead. This was Duchovny’s heyday too – this was something he filmed in between seasons of The X Files. He was a big deal. So what does Duchovny remember about Angelina?

You might not think of David Duchovny when Angelina Jolie comes up, but the Californication alum says he played a part in her success.

During an appearance on Sirius XM’s Radio Andy on Thursday, Duchovny was asked what immediately came to mind when he heard the names of various past costars. A mention of Jolie, his leading lady in the 1997 thriller Playing God, prompted him to say, “I feel like I discovered Angelina Jolie.”

When host Andy Cohen followed up on that, Duchovny explained what he meant.

“Yeah, cause I was casting, I was part of the casting,” Duchovny said of the movie that he headlined. “I didn’t discover her, but… she came in, and I just knew she was a movie star, and I told everybody [that] we’ve gotta cast her.”

The X Files alum confirmed that he was referring to Playing God, which also costarred Timothy Hutton. TV director Andy Wilson was behind the camera, and official casting credits went to Elaine J. Huzzar (From Dusk Till Dawn) and Johanna Ray (Snowpiercer). According to the movie’s official description, it’s about “a disgraced surgeon” who “reinvents himself as a gunshot doctor in the criminal underworld.”

[From EW]

From what (little) I remember of the film, Angelina really did steal some scenes and it was one of those films where you sit up and ask “who is THAT?” As I said, she was on a run back then – soon after, she did Gia, Pushing Tin (a hilariously weird role in a very offbeat movie) and The Bone Collector with Denzel. The same year as Playing God, she was in the George Wallace miniseries opposite Gary Sinise. David probably does feel like he discovered her, but she was being “discovered” by many different directors, producers and actors around the same time! Still, it’s sweet that David remembers that. Interestingly enough, David and Angelina never fooled around but Angelina reportedly dated Timothy Hutton back then.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.