It’s been 30 years since the premiere of a little show called The X-Files. Chris Carter’s pop culture phenomenon ran for nine seasons until 2002, before picking up in 2016 and again in 2018 for bonus seasons, and interspersed with two films. It was a show that had something for everyone: nominally a science fiction drama, it also lured in fans of conspiracy theories, Twilight Zone-style spookiness, monsters-of-the-week, and one of the most closely tracked will they/won’t they romances in television history.
Today we’re going to look at an integral part of the show: the guest stars who kept things fresh every week. Some went on to become famous, some were famous already, all had a hand in the show's enduring popularity.
20 Seth Green - "Deep Throat" (Season One, Episode Two)
Although this episode was more notable for the introduction of the mysterious Deep Throat character played by Jerry Hardin, it was also a role that would become classic for Seth Green as an affable, pot-smoking teen. He’d already done some film work (including Radio Days, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Airborne) and TV guest spots, but you can certainly look back on his role as Emil, a UFO-tracking, slightly mischievous teen, as setting the course for things to come.
19 Luke Wilson - "Bad Blood" (Season 5, Episode 12)
Luke Wilson was comic perfection playing two versions of one character in this humorous monster-of-the-week episode: in Scully’s version of events involving Mulder killing a possible vampire, Sheriff Hartwell is an attractive charmer. In Mulder’s version, Hartwell is more of a country hick with false teeth, with whom Scully is clearly infatuated. In this version, Hartwell is also a vampire, and Wilson carries off both versions of the Sheriff with aplomb.
18 Felicity Huffman - "Ice" (Season 1, Episode 8)
A snowy and remote research station is always a good setting for a mystery episode, and this one is no exception. Mulder and Scully, accompanied by a small scientific team and a surly pilot, set out for Alaska, where something grisly happened to a team of geophysicists, reminiscent of the doomed Norwegians in The Thing. Felicity Huffman, who was then pretty early on in her career, played a guarded toxicologist with some trust issues who may or may not be telling the truth herself.
17 Jesse L. Martin - "The Unnatural" (Season 6, Episode 19)
In one of the sweeter monsters-of-the-week, Martin played Josh Exley, who appears to be a black baseball player in the 1940s, but is actually an alien who loves baseball. David Duchovny wrote and directed the episode, and Jesse L. Martin is charming as the talented Exley, cast after Duchovny saw him perform in Rent. The overall story took inspiration from Jackie Robinson, with parallels between the racism Exley suffers and his secret identity as an extraterrestrial being tracked by the Alien Bounty Hunter, while Mulder and former FBI Agent Arthur Dales examine the story from the present-day.
16 Bryan Cranston - "Drive" (Season 6, Episode 2)
Bryan Cranston’s casting as Patrick Crump was particularly fortuitous as it led to an association with Vince Gilligan, and we all know how that went. The audience meets Crump mid-car chase on live TV news, seeing him stopped and pulled from the car moments before a woman in the backseat slams her head into the window, and it seems to explode. No sooner are Mulder and Scully on the case than Crump has escaped the police and holds Mulder hostage, insisting that he drive him west as fast as possible.
Scully races against time to figure out the cause of the unbearable pressure in Crump’s head, which turns out to be due to U.S. Navy sound waves. Cranston manages to take a sort of low-life, seemingly villainous character, and humanize him in the space of just one episode.
15 Tony Shalhoub - "Dark Matter" (Season 2, Episode 23)
Tony Shalhoub is a haunted, hunted man as Chester Ray Banton, a scientist whose experimentation with dark matter has turned his shadow into a deadly weapon, seemingly causing those who come into contact with it to spontaneously combust. Along with this sizable problem, Banton is on the run from the government, who kidnap him from the mental hospital he had committed himself to for safety’s sake. Shalhoub is suitably tortured as a man with no one left to trust, including himself.
14 Danny Trejo - "Redrum" (Season 8, Episode 6)
Danny Trejo’s role in this monster-of-the-week episode is a small one, but comes with the usual delight one feels when spotting Danny Trejo unexpectedly. The main character, prosecutor Martin Wells (played by Joe Morton in another stellar guest spot), is stuck in a strange loop, living out his week backwards, accused of murdering his wife. Awash in confusion, Wells turns to Agents Scully and Doggett for help.
They manage to track down the real killer, Cesar Ocampo (Trejo) by the spider tattoo on his hand, and find out the motive: Wells had covered up evidence that would have exonerated Ocampo’s brother. Scully and Doggett finally manage to stop him from killing Wells’ wife, thus ending the backwards loop, and Wells ends up serving time for his treatment of Ocampo’s brother.
13 Brad Dourif - "Beyond the Sea" (Season 1, Episode 13)
Brad Dourif is absolutely terrifying as Luther Lee Boggs, not only because he’s a serial killer claiming to have psychic knowledge of a series of kidnappings, but because he also seems to have the ability to channel Scully’s recently deceased father, singing a song played at his funeral, “Beyond the Sea”, and speaking in his voice, using his pet name for Scully, Starbuck.
Dourif, even with a long history of playing the mentally unhinged (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Wise Blood, The Eyes of Laura Mars), is especially chilling in the part, and was recognized as such by many critics.
12 Giovanni Ribisi - "D.P.O." (Season 3, Episode 3)
Much like it did for Seth Green (see above), this episode sparked Giovanni Ribisi’s career, making him a go-to actor when what you’re looking for is a nervous, suspicious teen who is most likely up to no good. We first meet Darin Oswald (Ribisi) getting into an argument at an Oklahoma video arcade.
The power shuts down inexplicably, except for the jukebox, and when Oswald’s friend leaves, he is electrocuted upon starting his car. It turns out this is not the first lightning-related death in town, and Mulder and Scully arrive to investigate, finding Oswald to be the other common link in the deaths. Oswald is a particularly emotional young man, and after being struck by lightning himself, has become able to harness electricity for devious purposes. (See also Jack Black, below.)
11 Mark Sheppard - "Fire" (Season 1, Episode 12)
English actor Mark Sheppard went on to make a name for himself in shows like Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, and Firefly, but he was off to a roaring start with his X-Files guest spot as Cecil L’Ively, a pyrokinetic Irishman with a penchant for arson. Mulder and Scully are called in by Mulder’s femme fatale ex Phoebe after a series of arson attacks which have left members of the British aristocracy not only dead, but completely incinerated.
As often happens, the culprit is right under their noses, as L’Ively has been working as gardener to the very family in need of protection. Mulder must overcome a fear of fire to save the family’s children, and Scully must overcome her dislike of Phoebe. L’Ively is given a taste of his own medicine when rocket fuel is thrown at him, but by the end of the episode, hideously burned as he is, he requests a cigarette, seemingly already on the mend.
10 Willie Garson - "The Walk" (Season 3, Episode 7) & "The Goldberg Variation" (Season Seven, Episode 6)
Willie Garson already had a solid career working in film and television when he was cast for The X-Files, and his second appearance overlapped what was to be his most famous role as Stanford Blatch on Sex and the City. In “The Walk”, Garson was Roach, a mailman at a VA hospital doing someone else’s dirty work and ending up dying for it. In “The Goldberg Variation”, Garson was a schlubby handyman, Henry Weems, who is also perhaps the luckiest man in the world, constantly avoiding death and winning large sums of money.
The title of the episode references both Rube Goldberg devices (which Weems crafts in his free time) and Bach’s “Goldberg Variations”. A young Shia LaBeouf also appears in “Goldberg Variations” as a sick boy who benefits from Weems’ good luck. It was one of only two times on The X-Files that an actor came back a second time as a different character (see Terry O’Quinn, below).
9 Lucy Liu - "Hell Money" (Season 3, Episode 19)
Lucy Liu’s touching appearance as leukemia-sufferer Kim Hsin came just two years before she found fame on Ally McBeal as the driven, icy Ling Woo. A mysterious series of deaths by fire have occurred in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and the agents are put in touch with SFPD office Glen Chao (see B.D. Wong, below), with whom they discover an underground organ trade/lottery, which can see participants either winning cash or losing an organ (or their life).
Kim’s father has entered the lottery in an attempt to get her medical treatment, and ends up losing an eye to the Hard Faced Man (a menacing James Hong), who is one of the men running the lottery. Liu’s Kim is a frail presence throughout, the ray of hope her father clings to, and by the end of the episode she’s on an organ donor list.
8 Bruce Campbell - "Terms of Endearment" (Season 6, Episode 7)
Bruce Campbell, well-known for his work in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, is incredibly amusing as Wayne Weinsider, whom the agents are set to investigate when it is suspected that he and his wife affected an illegal abortion after an ultrasound scan indicated that their fetus might have horns. His wife Laura has a story about the fetus being abducted by a demon, but Wayne convinces her she did it herself.
Turns out that Laura was in the right, and it’s her husband Wayne who is the demon. So why kill the fetus? Because even the devil wants a normal, healthy baby. Luckily for Wayne, he has another pregnant wife, Betsy (not his first other wife, either), but it turns out that Betsy has some issues of her own.
7 Jack Black - "D.P.O." (Season 3, Episode 3)
While not as flashy a role (pun absolutely intended) as Ribisi’s Oswald, he of the electricity-generating powers, Jack Black held his own as Bart “Zero” Liquori, who owns the video arcade where much of the action takes place. It was a full five years before Black’s breakout role as the cynical Barry in High Fidelity, but his performance as the ultimately doomed and prophetically named Zero was already getting him attention.
6 Vincent Schiavelli - "Humbug" (Season 2, Episode 20)
This monster-of-the-week episode was rife with so-called monsters, set in a trailer park whose denizens are all one-time sideshow performers, including Lanny (Vincent Schiavelli), a sweet alcoholic who carries around his underdeveloped conjoined twin named Leonard. The town they live in has been plagued by mysterious attacks for years, and the former carnival workers are tired of being blamed.
You’ll recognize a few other residents of the trailer park, including the manager Mr. Nutt (Michael J. Anderson) and The Conundrum (The Enigma) in this humorous episode, but it’s not all fun and games, as the perpetrator of the crimes turns out to be Lanny’s twin brother Leonard, who can detach himself from Lanny and prowl the town at night as, due to Lanny’s alcoholism, his body is no longer providing a comfortable home. Schiavelli is utterly believable as he tries to protect a brother everyone else sees as monstrous.
5 B.D. Wong - "Hell Mone" (Season 3, Episode 19)
B.D. Wong rubbed shoulders with Lucy Liu (see above) and James Hong in this dark tale of a black market organ trade with an even more sinister twist: it’s turned into a game to lure the desperate. Wong played Glen Chao, a San Francisco police detective who is Mulder and Scully’s contact in the Chinatown case. Chao finds himself acting as a go-between with the FBI on one side and a closed-off community on the other, and frequently at odds with both.
Chao’s final scene is one of the most terrifying in the history of The X-Files: having disappeared, we see him awake in a crematorium, about to suffer the same fate as those whose deaths he initially investigated.
4 Michael Emerson - "Sunshine Days" (Season 9, Episode 18)
Probably best known as the incredibly creepy Benjamin Linus on Lost, Michael Emerson was a perfect fit to play Oliver Martin, a man who owns what may or may not be the house where The Brady Bunch was filmed, but is definitely a house where two nosy trespassers are chucked into the air and killed after seeing what seemed to them to most definitely be The Brady Bunch house, even though it doesn’t appear that way to other people. It turns out that Martin was a lonely psychokinetic child who identified with the Bradys, and especially with Oliver, the cousin who showed up towards the end when ratings were on the decline and was considered one of the reasons for its eventual downfall.
3 Jane Lynch - "Lord of the Flies" (Season 9, Episode 5)
Jane Lynch’s career was just on the verge of taking off when she appeared in this episode, just a year after her hilarious role as a dog trainer in Best in Show. This guest spot proved to be a nice little predictor for her academic work years later on Glee, here, she played school principal Anne Lokensgard, whose bullied son Dylan has a distinctly sinister side, involving insects. It turns out that both Anne and Dylan have been cocooning their prey at home for years, including the long-absent Mr. Lokensgard. This episode is also notable for Aaron Paul in an early role (see below).
2 Terry O’Quinn - "Aubrey" (Season 2, Episode 12) & "Trust No One" (Season 9, Episode 6)
Another actor who went on to star in Lost (see Michael Emerson, above), Terry O’Quinn played Lieutenant Brian Tillman, who has just impregnated his detective girlfriend, B.J. B.J. starts to have visions involving a missing FBI agent and 50-year-old case that Tillman recognizes, of a sadistic serial killer who carved the word “Sister” into the chests of his victims. The episode explores the possibility of the concept of genetic memories.
In "Trust No One", O’Quinn is known only as The Shadow Man, who contacts Scully insisting she must contact the missing Mulder, so he can give him information on the so-called Super Soldier project, but also seems hell-bent on abducting Scully’s infant son William. O’Quinn also appeared as Special Agent Michaud in The X-Files: Fight the Future, who is supposed to detonate a bomb in the opening scenes, but ends up letting it explode.
1 Aaron Paul - "Lord of the Flies" (Season 9, Episode 5)
Chalk this up to another helpful encounter with Vince Gilligan, who cast Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad with fellow X-Files alum Bryan Cranston. Paul played a Seth Green/Giovanni Ribisi-style character (see above) as David “Winky” Winkle, who is filming stunts for a show called Dumbass with a friend when said friend dies during a stunt with a ramp and a shopping cart, although the cause of death is surprisingly that insects ate his brain. As he is interviewed by Agent Doggett, lice bite the word “Dumbass” into his skin, which begins to point the blame towards schoolmate Dylan.