Trivia: Rocketing from obscure bit player to TV's resident über-sex god thanks to his role as FBI agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files, David Duchovny can claim to have had one of the 1990s' more remarkable career metamorphoses. Although his initial attempts to translate his TV stardom into celluloid success proved less than memorable, the tall, classically handsome actor has continued to enjoy a great deal of popularity, evidenced in particular by the countless estrogen-drenched internet shrines erected in his honor.Born in Manhattan on August 7, 1960, to a Jewish father and a Scottish mother, Duchovny did his undergraduate work at Princeton and then went on to pursue a Master's degree in English Literature at Yale. While working toward his degree, he began commuting to New York to study acting, and he was soon appearing in a few off-Broadway plays. His interest in acting ultimately eclipsed his dedication toward earning his degree, and Duchovny dropped out of Yale to pursue a career as a performer. He got his first break starring in a beer commercial, and in 1988, he made his film debut with a breathtakingly abbreviated appearance as a party guest in Mike Nichols's Working Girl. Work in a number of diverse and usually obscure films, including starring roles in Julia Has Two Lovers (1991), The Rapture (1991), and Kalifornia (1993), followed, but the actor was able to command a more steady paycheck from his TV work. Before The X-Files debuted in 1993, Duchovny was best-known to TV viewers as Dennis/Denise, Twin Peaks' resident transvestite detective. As The X-Files steadily grew from cult favorite to mainstream success, becoming recognized as one of the most groundbreaking shows of the decade, Duchovny also began to enjoy both industry respect and huge audience popularity. Dubbed as the latest in a long line of thinking women's sex symbols, he would also appear in films like Playing God and Return to Me.Duchovny would The X-Files during the show's seventh season, much to fans' dismay, returning only for the series finaly. Post X-files, Duchovny would continue to act on screen, most notably in films like Trust the Man and another X-Files movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, as well as on the debaucherous TV series Californication.

Trivia: Laurie Holden took one of her first on-camera bows as a teenager, in Michael Anderson's sex farce Separate Vacations (1986), then forked off into a series of programmers that included the 1989 Burt Reynolds cop drama Physical Evidence; the 1996 historical saga The Pathfinder, based on the novel by James Fenimore Cooper; and the 2004 animal picture Bailey's Billion$. Holden also found some success on the small screen, playing a memorable recurring role on the seminal sci-fi series The X-Files, that of Marita Covarrubias, a mysterious government worker who becomes an informant to Special Agent Fox Mulder starting in the fourth season of that show through the final one (1996-2002). She also had a supporting role, as Mary Travis, on the shortlived Western series The Magnificent Seven (1998-2000). Holden achieved her cinematic big break in 2001 -- when producers tapped her to appear as the sunny romantic interest of Jim Carrey in Frank Darabont's colossal fantasy The Majestic; Holden followed it up with an equally lucrative and exciting part in yet another A-list film: Debbie McIlvane in the effects-heavy summer blockbuster Fantastic Four (2005). She also essayed a prominant role, as a police woman, in the critically panned but fiscally successful horror opus Silent Hill (2006), adapted from the popular video game of the same title, and re-teamed with Darabont for both the 2007 Stephen King adaptation The Mist (2007), and the hit AMC zombie series The Walking Dead. In addition to her film and television work, Holden is active with such children's charities as Planet Hope and Feed the Children.

Trivia: Started acting as a child, working in summer stock with the Straw Hat Players in Ontario. Served as assistant director of England's National Theatre for six years, working under acting legend Laurence Olivier. Was artistic director of the National Theatre School's English Acting Program in Montreal. In 1989, he opened the William Davis Centre for Actors' Study—which counts Xena star Lucy Lawless among its former pupils—in Vancouver. An avid water skiier, he has been Canadian national champion in his age division several times. Contrary to his X-Files character, who was known as the "Smoking Man" or "Cancer Man," ex-smoker Davis is a Canadian Cancer Society spokesperson; he quit smoking in the 1970s and used herbal cigarettes on the show. Published his memoir, Where There's Smoke....The Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, in 2011.

Trivia: A solid character actor whose balding head and craggy face are perfect for playing any number of stuffy bureaucrats, Mitch Pileggi gradually came to attention in the television world as FBI Deputy Director Walter S. Skinner, the man directly in charge of Special Agents Mulder and Scully in their investigations into The X-Files. At first played mainly as a brick wall for Mulder to run into periodically, Skinner has gradually taken on depth and nuance, as well as a certain mysterious quality -- he appears to be somehow involved with the mysterious Elders, yet has stood against them, and the Cigarette Smoking Man (William D. Davis) on more than one occasion. Skinner has also been the primary focus of several episodes, and has been tied directly into the mythology of the series. Neither Mulder nor Scully seem to have a firm idea of where Skinner stands and his position was supposed to be revealed in the 1998 X-Files motion picture.Pileggi is the son of a former Department of Defense contractor who took his family all over the world during Pileggi's youth. Pileggi himself also went to work, very briefly, for the Department of Defense, but abandoned that career track in favor of theater when he was 27 years old. He quickly graduated from the theater to parts in television and motion pictures, always playing relatively small, low-key parts. He had a recurring part in Dallas for a while. During his career he had lead billing only in Wes Craven's Shocker, in which he played a serial killer who manages to cheat the electric chair by becoming electrical energy himself. A couple of Pileggi fan clubs have been created since his first appearance on The X-Files, and his AudioBook readings of the various X-Files novelizations have done very well for HarperCollins. While Skinner's ultimate fate is unknown, he seems likely to survive the 1998 X-Files movie -- though one should be mindful of the ultimate fates of earlier characters Deep Throat and Mister X.

Trivia: During the 1940s, which many scholars regard as the heyday of British films, Allan Gray was one of the busiest and most visible film composers in England. Ironically, despite his years of association with British films, he was neither English nor was he really "Allan Gray." He was born Joseph Zmigrod in Poland in 1902 and was a student of Arnold Schoenberg during the 1920s. He later went to work for producer Max Reinhardt, writing music for his stage productions, and also composed a children's opera called Wavelength ABC. Gray began his career writing music for motion pictures with the 1933 German feature F.P. 1, but after the rise of the Nazis in the mid-'30s, he was forced to leave Germany, following his scoring of the 1936 version of Emil and the Detectives. He came to England and took the name Allan Gray. By the late 1930s, he was established in the British film industry, working at Alexander Korda's London Films, on pictures like The Challenge, and at other major studios. Gray reached the peak of his influence and visibility in the first half of the 1940s when he wrote the scores for a series of films by the writer/producer/director team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Gray was responsible for the music in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), and I Know Where I'm Going (1945). Blimp's soundtrack had an Elgarian splendor and opulence, while A Canterbury Tale and I Know Where I'm Going incorporated elements of folk song, hymns, and popular music in portions of their scores. Gray's greatest work for the Powell/Pressburger team was A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven), a 1946 fantasy-drama with a canvas that moved from the infinitely small to the infinitely large and utilized scoring across a similar range. In particular, the eight-note theme at the center of the score is transmuted in a series of variations, reappearing in guises ranging from solo to a grand, near-symphonic treatment; this was also the first of Gray's film scores to be recorded -- in 1946 by the Queen's Hall Light Orchestra under Charles Williams. After 1946, Powell and Pressburger turned to Brian Easdale for their film compositions, but by then Gray was well established, and he got some prominent assignments in the 1950s, including John Huston's The African Queen. Like most English composers of his generation, Gray disappeared from the scene after the 1950s, as British films got smaller and also more daring, and producers began abandoning symphonic-style scores in favor of those with tunes that could become popular hits. His music has undergone a mild renaissance in recent decades with the rediscovery and restoration of most of Powell and Pressburger's major films.