A Portland native, Mitch Pileggi began acting in high school in Turkey, in musical theatre. After returning to Austin, Texas from Iran, he performed in local theatres and continued his acting career with small roles in B-movies and series including Dallas, China Beach, Code of Vengeance, and Walker, Texas Ranger.

Mitch’s career began to take off in the 1980s, starring in several films, including Three O’Clock High, Brothers In Arms and Wes Craven’s cult horror sensation Shocker, as body-possessing serial killer Horace Pinker. In 1994, Mitch landed his most famed role, that of Assistant FBI Director Walter Skinner on The X-Files. Originally a recurring part, Mitch and the showrunners developed Skinner into the most integral character besides the two leads, remaining with the series until its end in 2002, including performing in The X-Files film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe and The X-Files video game, and later reprised the role in the 2016 miniseries.

Mitch has had more appearances and guest roles that we can mention here and has starred in many other series, including Eric Kripke’s Tarzan, Day Break and Grey’s Anatomy. Other notable roles include as Colonel Steven Caldwell, Commander of the Earth Battlecruiser, Daedalus in Stargate Atlantis; the villainous Ernest Darby, the head of a white supremacist gang called the “Nordics”, in Sons of Anarchy, Harris Ryland in the revived Dallas and Samuel Campbell, the maternal grandfather of Sam and Dean Winchester, in Supernatural.

Mitch has also performed as a voice actor, with major roles as the githzerai Dak’kon in the award-winning video game Planescape: Torment and Commissioner James Gordon in The Batman. Most recently, Mitch has starred as Bonham Walker, the father of the titular Cordell Walker, in CW’s Walker.