Gillian Anderson

Gillian Leigh Anderson (born August 9, 1968) is an American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer. Her credits include the roles of FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in the long-running and widely popular series The X-Files, ill-fated socialite Lily Bart in Terence Davies' film The House of Mirth (2000), and Lady Dedlock in the successful BBC production of Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Among other honours, Anderson has won a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

After beginning her career on stage, Anderson achieved international recognition for her role as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully on the American sci-fi drama series The X-Files for all ten seasons (1993–2002, 2016). Her film work includes the dramas The Mighty Celt (2005), The Last King of Scotland (2006), Shadow Dancer (2012) and two X-Files films: The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998) and The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008). Her other notable television credits are Any Human Heart, The Crimson Petal and the White, portraying Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (2011) and Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier on Hannibal. In 2013, Anderson began starring as DSI Stella Gibson on the critically acclaimed BBC crime drama television series The Fall. She has been serving as an executive producer from its second series.

David Duchovny

David William Duchovny (born August 7, 1960) is an American actor, writer, producer, director, and singer-songwriter. He is known for playing FBI Agent Fox Mulder on the sci-fi horror action drama show The X-Files and writer Hank Moody on the comedy-drama series Californication, both of which have earned him Golden Globe awards. Duchovny appeared in both of the two X-Files films, the 1998 science fiction-thriller of the same name and the supernatural-thriller The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008). As of May 2015, he has been executive producing and starring in the historically based cop drama Aquarius.

Duchovny has a B.A. in English Literature from Princeton University and an M.A. in English Literature from Yale University.

Early life and education

Duchovny was born in New York, New York in 1960. He is the son of Margaret "Meg" (née Miller), a school administrator and teacher, and Amram "Ami" Duchovny (1927–2003), a writer and publicist who worked for the American Jewish Committee. Duchovny's mother is a Lutheran emigrant from Aberdeen, Scotland. His father was Jewish; Duchovny's paternal grandfather was from Berdychiv, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), and Duchovny's paternal grandmother was born in Russian Poland (now in Poland). His father dropped the h in his last name to avoid the sort of mispronunciations he encountered while serving in the Army.

Mitch Pileggi

Mitchell Craig "Mitch" Pileggi (born April 5, 1952) is an American actor, best known for his role as Walter Skinner on The X-Files. He also had a recurring role on Stargate Atlantis as Colonel Steven Caldwell. He appeared in the 2008 film Flash of Genius. In 2008, he began a recurring role as Ernest Darby in Sons of Anarchy. He starred as Harris Ryland in the TNT revival of Dallas (2012–2014).

Early life

Pileggi, one of several children, was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of Maxine Anna (Minor), 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 at 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.

The X-Files

The X-Files is an American science fiction horror drama television series created by Chris Carter. The program originally aired from September 10, 1993, to May 19, 2002, on Fox, spanning nine seasons, with 202 episodes and a feature film of the same name, before returning with a second film in 2008 and a six-episode tenth season in 2016. The series revolves around FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who investigate X-Files: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena. Mulder believes in the existence of aliens and the paranormal while Scully, a medical doctor and a skeptic, is assigned to make scientific analyses of Mulder's discoveries to debunk his work and thus return him to mainstream cases. Early in the series, both agents become pawns in a larger conflict and come to trust only each other and a very few select people. They develop a close relationship which begins as a platonic friendship, but becomes a romance by the end of the series. In addition to the series-spanning story arc, "Monster-of-the-Week" episodes form roughly two-thirds of all episodes.