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Mitch Pileggi

This tall, athletic and bald character player of film and TV certainly made the most of a guest shot on a first season episode ("Tooms") of the hit Fox paranormal drama "The X-Files." Pileggi (pronounced "puh-ledgy") was invited back for an eight-episode arc at the beginning of the second season--largely coinciding with Gillian Anderson's diminished presence due to her pregnancy. Initially viewed with suspicion by both the show's protagonists and fans, the intense, repressed and seething FBI Assistant Director Skinner eventually won everyone over with his quietly heroic efforts to aid his sometimes renegade agents even at the price of angering his masters and putting his professional and physical life on the line. Skinner has said that he stands on the line that David Duchovny's Agent Fox Mulder routinely crosses. The character became one of the show's tiny group of recurring characters. Pileggi realized well into his characterization that he had been unconsciously modeling Skinner on his own late father, Vito, a defense contractor.