Chris Ellis

He appeared in three season one episodes of Millennium as group member Jim Panseayres. He established a reputation for portraying Southern lawmakers or serious military or police-type characters. He played a priest in The Dark Knight Rises (2012).

After working with Hanks on Apollo 13, the two worked together on That Thing You Do, the television miniseries From the Earth to the Moon and Catch Me If You Can. Ellis played fictional NASA Mission Control when he played a flight director in 1998's Armageddon.

In 1990, a break came when he got a part in Days of Thunder. This seemed to jump-start Ellis's career as parts in My Cousin Vinny, Addams Family Values and Apollo 13 as former NASA Mercury Seven astronaut Deke Slayton. He began picking up credits on well-known television series including Melrose Place, NYPD Blue and The X-Files.

His first part in either television or film came in 1979, where he played a truck driver in the television movie The Suicide's Wife, which starred Angie Dickinson. The role resulted in little further work. After working in regional theater for a year or so, Ellis did not work for about ten years. During that time he lived in "bone-grinding poverty" in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. In one nine-month period of 1987, Ellis accepted 102 dinner invitations. "I don't know why they kept arriving, nor why I counted them, though I do know why I accepted them."

Christopher Ellis (born April 14, 1956) is an American film and television actor.