Resist or Serve: the Official Guide to The X-Files

Chris Owens heard all the rumors: That he was the replacement for David Duchovny; that he was the threatened replacement for David Duchovny; that he would appear in eight episodes next season; that David Duchovny would appear in eight episodes next season; that his casting was a sure sign that the show would remain in Vancouver; that his casting was a diabolically misleading sign that the show would be leaving Vancouver.

"People kept telling me to be prepared for big news," smiles the good-natured thirty-six-year-old actor, standing on the X-Files set during the filming of the fifth season's final episode. "And I kept asking myself: 'What is it?'"

In truth, the real news is that Owens - a tall, thin man who had labored in semianonymity for nearly half his life - is neither a bargaining chip, an insurance policy, or a plot device. What he is is simply a talented actor on his way up, with a role that had been written especially for him, and inserted into the center of one of the highest-profile television series in the world.

"Believe it or not, I didn't have to audition for the part of Jeffrey Spender," says Owens. incredulously. "Which is a great privilege. The most substantial I've gotten so far."

Owens smiles happily when recounting pleasant conversations with the likes of Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and Chris Carter. It wasn't too long ago that he was bartending and waiting tables between roles. Many of these roles had titles like "Soldier" and "Young Security Guard." When asked about this period of his life Owens nods, smiles slightly, and says proudly, "I've supported myself since I was eighteen.."

Owens was born and raised in Toronto. His father was a radio broadcaster; his mother a jazz singer; and his stepfather a musician-turned-magician-turned-optician. He studied acting at the University of Toronto and at the prestigious Herbert Berghof Studio in New York City. "I was there for two stints of three and four months apiece," he says. "It was a great learning experience."

Back in Toronto, he had his "career ups and downs," including small roles in the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail; the cable TV movie Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story; and several stretches filled primarily with food service and other temporary jobs.

In mid-1996 he moved west to Vancouver in search of further opportunity, which found him in the form of "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man" (4x07). He guest-starred in that episode as the Young Cigarette-Smoking Man, meassing with the minds of such reimagined notables as Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray, and giving such a cool, tightly-controlled, and sometimes frightening performance that he got almost as much notice as "Musings," one of the most noticeable episodes of the fourth season.

Then came a real fright: After "Musings" wrapped, he applied for several waiter jobs and for the first time in his working life, didn't get a single one. "Nobody knew me in the Vancouver restaurant world," says Owens, wryly. "But, luckily, after a little while The X-Files called me and said they needed me for a flashback," says Owens.

That flashback was as the Young Cigarette-Smoking Man in "Demons" (4x23), a standalone episode written by executive producer R.W. Goodwin. Shortly afterward, he was also cast in an early second-season hour of Millennium.

Clearly, he was now part of Chris Carter's extended stock company. Early in The X-Files' fifth season, Owens was called in to audition - naked-faced - for the nearly impossible role of the Great Mutato - the grotesquely featured centerpiece of "The Post-Modern Prometheus" (5XO6). He won the role and the right to guest star, completely unrecognizable, beneath several layers of elaborate and unwieldy prosthetic makeup. Acing this exhausting assignment earned him a prized back-handed compliment from Carter.

"After 'Prometheus,' we ran into each other at a local bar one evening," says Owens, grinning. "When Chris saw me he shook my hand and said, 'I didn't know they served guys with two faces here.'"

What Owens didn't know was that another admirer - David Duchovny - had taken careful notice of Owens and recommended to Carter that he be brought back on to the show as soon as possible. Thinking much along the same lines, Carter took advantage of Owens's Young Cigarette Smoking Man heritage to create Jeffrey Spender, a foil to Fox Mulder and a character whose murky and Mulder-like alleged genetic connections to the Cigarette-Smoking Man could be exploited to the fullest.

That's when the rumors started. "I always knew David wasn't leaving," scoffs Owens. He does, however, admit that the announcement that The X-Files was moving to Los Angeles came "exactly one hour after I'd figured out that it was definitely staying in Vancouver."

A final update: After the big annoucement things started moving even faster. Signed for approximately half the episodes of the sixth season, Owens filled out the paperwork for his green card and sublet an apartment in Hollywood. Left behind in Vancouver was his steady girlfriend, law student Tara Parker, but Owens hopes that this state of affairs is strictly temporary. As this volume goes to press, Owens is studying his Los Angeles street maps; signing photographs for posting at his new dry cleaner; and marveling at the upward curve his career trajectory has been taking lately.

"What a way to get to L.A!" exults Owens. "Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine anything like this happening."