- published: 13 Sep 2015
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Mitchell Craig "Mitch" Pileggi (born April 5, 1952) is an American actor. Pileggi is known for playing FBI assistant director Walter Skinner on the long-running popular series The X-Files. He also had a recurring role on Stargate Atlantis as Col. Steven Caldwell. He appeared in the 2008 film, Flash of Genius.
Pileggi, one of several children, was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of Maxine, a homemaker, and Vito Pileggi, a defense contractor. His family moved frequently because of his father's occupation, and Pileggi lived in Oregon, California, and Texas before spending most of his adolescence in Turkey.
Pileggi was a high school athlete, concentrating on wrestling and football. He attended the University of Texas in Austin, receiving a degree in business. For a while he worked in Iran as a defense contractor, until the 1979 Iranian revolution caused him and his brother to have to flee the country, escaping to Greece.
Pileggi began acting while he was a high school student in Turkey, playing musical theater. After returning to Austin from Iran, he performed in local theaters, and continued his acting career with small roles in B-movies, and guest roles in television shows such as Dallas, China Beach, Code of Vengeance, and Walker, Texas Ranger.
Jensen Ross Ackles (born March 1, 1978) is an American actor and director. He is known for his roles in television as Eric Brady in Days of our Lives, which earned him several Daytime Emmy Award nominations, as well as Alec/X5-494 in Dark Angel and Jason Teague in Smallville. Ackles currently stars as Dean Winchester on the CW series Supernatural.
Ackles was born in Dallas, Texas, the son of Donna Joan (née Shaffer) and Alan Roger Ackles, an actor. Ackles has a brother, Joshua, who is three years older, and sister, Mackenzie, who is seven years younger. He is of English, Irish and Scottish ancestry. He had planned to study sports medicine at Texas Tech University and become a physical therapist but instead moved to Los Angeles to start his acting career.
After modelling on and off since the age of 4, Ackles began to concentrate on an acting career in 1996. He appeared in several guest roles on Mr. Rhodes, Sweet Valley High, and Cybill before joining the cast of the NBC soap opera Days of our Lives as Eric Brady in 1997. He won a 1998 Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Male Newcomer and went on to be nominated three times (in 1998, 1999, and 2000) for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actor in a Drama Series for his work on Days of our Lives.