10 The X-Files Episodes Featuring Stars Before They Were Famous

The X-Files is one of the longest running sci-fi shows in network TV history and rightfully so. FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully spent over 200 episodes proving that the truth was indeed out there over the course of its original nine-season run on FOX. With so much paranormal activity, that leaves plenty of weekly stories with a lot of one-and-done roles that needed to be filled from 1993 to 2002. That in mind, it’s easy to forget that many of the stars we know and love now got their start on the iconic show. Here are ten times that very famous faces appeared in The X-Files long before their careers took off.

1) Ryan Reynolds – Season 3, Episode 13, “Syzygy“

Even Deadpool has to start somewhere. In one of of his first acting roles, Ryan Reynolds played Jay De Boom on Season 3 of The X-Files. In this episode, a rare aligning of planets give two teenage girls telekinetic powers, which they use to form a cult in their small town. Reynolds plays their classmate, whose offer to give the girls a ride home one night results in him dead and hanging off a cliff the following morning.

2) Jack Black – Season 3, Episode 3, “D.P.O.”

It’s hard to imagine a time when Jack Black wasn’t a household name and internationally known funnyman. In 1995, Black guest-starred on The X-Files as Bart “Zero” Liquori, an arcade owner who gets mixed up in the murders caused by a man who can control lightning. The man in question and Zero’s friend in the episode, Darin Peter Oswald, was played by fellow rising star Giovanni Ribisi. Their friendship goes south when Oswald strikes Zero dead via lightning after suspecting Black’s character for ratting him out to the authorities.

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3) Bryan Cranston – Season 6, Episode 2, “Drive”

Two years before his starring role of sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, Bryan Cranston guest-starred on The X-Files as Patrick Crump, who’s suspected to be a criminal. Through Mulder and Scully’s investigating it’s reveals that Crump was exposed to ELF waves from a US Navy atenna, that caused him to develop a rare and odd condition that manifests as inner ear pressure that can only be eased by westward motion and an increase in speed. The episode was written by Vince Gilligan, who re-teamed with Cranston on his series Breaking Bad a decade later.

4) Aaron Paul – Season 9, Episode 5, “Lord of the Flies”

Given Gilligan’s involvement on the show, it’s no surprise another future star of Breaking Bad also guest-starred on The X-Files. Aaron Paul played David ‘Sky Commander Winky’ Winkle, a school bully who likes to perform stunts for a cable TV show called “Dumbass.” Paul’s bully Winkle meets an unfortunate and chilling end at the hand’s of the episode’s “freak of the week,” a social outcast who can control insects. After the death of another student, Doggett and Reyes arrive at the school to talk to Winky. While they speak with Paul’s character, body lice mysteriously attack him and bite “Dumbass” into poor Winky’s flesh. Yikes.

5) Shia LeBeouf – Season 7, Episode 6, “The Goldberg Variation”

Pre-global box office notoriety in Transformers, Shia LaBeouf was a working child actor. On this episode of The X-Files, a young LaBeouf plays Richie, a sick neighbor of an preternaturally lucky man, Henry Weems (the late great Willie Garson) that Mulder and Scully are investigating after he survived a 29-story fall. Mulder and Scully reveal the Weems is using his ability to seemingly influence happenstance to raise $100,000 to pay for a medical treatment for Richie.

[RELATED: This Is Still the Scariest Episode of The X-Files for Me]

6) Luke Wilson – Season 5, Episode 12, “Bad Blood”

Luke Wilson’s turn on The X-Files involves conflicting accounts of a murder and vampires. Wilson plays Sheriff Hartwell, who after allegedly helping Mulder and Scully investigate a man who appears to be a vampire, reveals to Scully that he is one as well. A surprisingly suspenseful and creepy turn for an actor, who like Jack Black, went on a comedic star.

7) Lucy Liu – Season 3, Episode 19, “Hell Money”

When Mulder and Scully head to San Francisco’s Chinatown to look into a murder that the dealt with selling organs on the black market, their investigation leads them to Kim Hsin, played by a young Lucy Liu. Like LaBeouf’s Richie, she’s also stricken with cancer…which provides the motivation for the episode’s shady dealings.

8) Bradley Whitford – Season 2, Episode 9, “Firewalker”

Five years prior to his stint in the fictional White House on The West Wing, Bradley Whitford played a mad scientist. After a robotics project broadcasting from inside a volcano goes awry, it’s revealed that Whitford’s character Dr. Trepkos, discovered a gruesome, contagious fungus and ultimately succumbs to the terrifying contagious parasite. Mulder and Scully narrowly emerge unscathed, Whitford’s Trepkos isn’t so lucky.

9) Seth Green – Season 1, Episode 2, “Deep Throat”

Seth Green guest-starred on one of the very first episodes of The X-Files. He played Emil, a teen Mulder and Scully encounter trespassing at an Air Force Base in the Midwest they believe is housing a UFO. Emil and his girlfriend Zoe (Lalainia Lindbjerg) provide the agents with valuable intel in their investigation.

10) Titus Welliver – Season 1, Episode 20 “Darkness Falls”

Nowadays, Titus Welliver is a staple on our screen as the titular detective in Bosch and Bosch: Legacy. Back in 1994, Welliver made one of his first-ever TV appearances on the first season of The X-Files as Doug Spinney, an eco-terrorist Mulder and Scully come across while investigating the discovery deadly insect-like creatures with the capability to paralyze and cocoon humans.