X-Files big break for Vancouver actor
Ian Bailey
The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER - Chris Owens is clutching the actors' equivalent of a winning lottery
ticket these days.
After years of small roles in such TV shows as Street Legal, the Vancouver actor has
been cast as FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Spender in TV's The X-Files.
He played Spender in two recent episodes and is in a third episode next month.
And there's a chance Owens - and Spender - will return next season as a semi-regular
on the hit show starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson that has been filmed in
Vancouver since 1993.
The job drops the rake-thin hockey buff into one of North America's most popular TV
shows, playing a lawman slightly skeptical about the weird stuff routinely probed by
heroes Dana Scully and Fox Mulder. Kate Robbins, an executive in the B.C. actors union,
calls steady work in any Vancouver-shot U.S. show "the Holy Grail" for actors in Canada's
third-largest city. A decade ago, Vancouver actors were bit players in a film and TV
sector last year worth about $600 million.
"(We) were mostly there to fill up the edges and be scenery that moved," says Robbins,
vice-president of the Union of B.C. Performers - the provincial wing of the national
ACTRA union.
"Over time, our talent and professionalism has made inroads with the American productions
here."
Owens sees his work, to date, as "every actor's dream - steady work on a show you
actually like."
"Nothing is set in stone," says Owens, 36, sipping coffee from a black X-Files mug at
his agents' office in a downtown skyscraper.
"I'm simply hoping the third episode goes well and that Chris has a spot for me next
season."
That's Chris as in Carter, creator, writer and occasional director of The X-Files, and
the unrelated but equally spooky Millennium, starring craggy-faced Lance Henriksen.
With luck, Owens may be joining the various Vancouver-area actors who have had recurring
roles in X-Files. So far, they include William Davis - a local acting teacher - as the
villainous Cigarette-Smoking Man, plus Dean Haglund, Tom Braidwood and Bruce Harwood as
Mulder-Scully allies the Lone Gunmen. There's also Vancouver's Nicholas Lea, who turns up
occasionally as downright evil Alex Krycek.
"There is talk of some work next season if the powers that be decide that's the way they
want to go," says Owens. "If you hear a yelling and screaming around June in Vancouver,
that will be me saying, 'Yaaaaah. I'm on.'
"Or not."
Owens, who's from Toronto, decided to be an actor when he was a kid and did the community
theatre, high-school circuit before landing his first paying acting job at 19 - a role
in the old CBC sitcom Hanging In. Owens and his girlfriend fell in love with Vancouver
during a visit. She wanted to go to law school here. He was eager to try a new
market.
Owens fell into Carter's orbit with a small role in Millennium as a small-town sheriff's
deputy caught up in the furor over allegations of child abuse at a day-care centre. On
X-Files, he played Davis's character as a young man in the key episode Musing of a
Cigarette Smoking Man - a bad guy so deliriously foul he assassinated both John F.
Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Later - under a lot of makeup - Owens played the
two-headed Great Mutato in an episode Carter directed.
The Chris Owens file
By The Canadian Press
Personal: Age 36. Raised in Toronto. Mother a singer. Father a jazz drummer.
Professional: Studied briefly in New York. Began performing on stage in early '80s.
First paying acting gig was role as hypochondriac in CBC sitcom Hanging In.
Film, Movies of the Week roles: Cocktail, The Big Town, Paris or Somewhere, Giant Mine.
TV series: The X-Files, Millennium, Psi Factor, Kung Fu, Tekwar, Top Cops. E.N.G., Street
Legal, 9B.
Quote: "They do (camera) setups quickly. And once it's done, we're onto the next thing.
There is an aspect of throwing yourself into the wind. I don't come on to the set with
things set in concrete." - Owens on acting for X-Files.
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