I can certainly understand David [Duchovny], the actor, trying to get out from underneath Mulder, the character. I've been living in the shadow of that shiny guy from Terminator 2. … You just hope audiences can see you in different ways and can see you as different characters.

- Robert Patrick

For almost a decade, Robert Patrick's coolly handsome face has been eliciting Pavlovian flinches from the general public, which recognizes him as the fiercely focused T-1000 cyborg who debuted opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. With a stint on The X-Files, as well as roles in numerous high-profile films, Patrick hopes to prove that he's more than Arnie's archnemesis.

Before terrorizing audiences, Patrick alternately aided and antagonized his four younger siblings as they moved around the country, from Marietta, Ga., to Cleveland. Patrick reminisced about those good old days on Zap2it.com: "My brother Richie, God, I remember, I think he was 4 or 5 years old when he got his first guitar. He'd asked for it, and he never put it down. Growing up with him, if I picked up his guitar, he'd start screaming at me, 'That's my guitar!'"

The adult "Richie," a k a Richard, eventually formed the band Filter (the band contributed a couple of tunes to the Files, dontcha know). Big brother Robert says, "Now I've heard those screams mature into the screams that he does on his music. I know where that came from. I was there. I was the older brother, taking the guitar away and letting him practice that scream. In a weird way, maybe I helped him out."

When not unwittingly cultivating a distinctive rock talent, Patrick played American Legion Baseball in high school and then headed to Bowling Green University in Bowling Green, Ohio, where he joined the football team and dreamed of a future with the pros. He lasted a year and then returned home, a 6-foot, 215-pound 21-year-old living in his parents' basement (a chick magnet for sure).

"I really didn't like myself at all," Patrick told People. "Something was eating at me. It was like, 'What do I want to do?'" While wondering if "acting" was the answer, Patrick spent four years painting houses, waiting tables, dieting, and even looking to Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder for inspiration.

"I needed a swift kick in the ass," Patrick said to People, adding that the kick came when he, four friends, and his brother S. Lewis had a boating accident. The only one with a life jacket, Patrick headed to shore for help. "While I was swimming, I was saying to myself, 'I'll quit wasting my life.'" First he saved his loved ones; three months later, he headed to Hollywood.

Patrick's first "meaty" role as an actor was that of a psychotic biker in Roger Corman's Warlords of Hell. The rest of the '80s was spent on sets, personifying characters named "Johnny Ransom" and "Slade" in such fine artistic attempts as Behind Enemy Lines (admittedly, on the set of that film he met his future wife, Barbara, which lessens the stigma) and Hollywood Boulevard. He joined the upper echelon of schlocky tough guys in 1990, working opposite Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2. Only one year later, Patrick would enter the pop culture annals as T2's T-1000, wielding an ice-blue, ice-pick-sharp stare that mimicked the gaze of an eagle. He'd also get to personally "thank" Arnie for helping him lose 60 pounds by body-slamming the former Mr. Universe again and again. "Inside, I was laughing," Patrick confessed to People. "I had to pinch myself."

Although Patrick reprised his T-1000 role in amusement park attractions and for a scene in Wayne's World 2, he also continued to win job after job through the '90s, and he even formed a production company, 360 Entertainment, with two friends. Flicks someone paid full-price admission for include Striptease, in which Patrick embraced the white-trash nature of Darrell, a man whose tendency to sell stolen wheelchairs from the back of his van causes his wife (Demi Moore) to lose her secretarial job with the FBI. There's also Cop Land, featuring Sly Stallone at his meatiest and Patrick as Harvey Keitel's right-hand man (sporting a quasi-mullet, no less). And who can forget the teen-horror hit The Faculty (1998), with Patrick putting his past athletic skills to good use as Coach Willis, the human host for an evil alien.

Speaking of aliens, cut to elsewhere in Hollywood, where David Duchovny was informing the producers of The X-Files that he only wanted minimal involvement in the series' eighth season. It wouldn't have been a surprise if his decision had resulted in some pulling of hair and downing of shots, followed by a search for the actor who could fill in for Agent Fox Mulder without alienating his legions of fans.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, producers settled on four possibilities: Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead), Hart Bochner (Urban Legends: Final Cut), Lou Diamond Phillips (La Bamba), and Patrick, recently seen as an indebted gambler on The Sopranos.

"Robert had actually come in a couple of years ago to read for something else. He wasn't quite right for that part, but I knew I wanted to work with him," X-Files creator Chris Carter told members of the Television Critics Association when the announcement was made. With at least a dozen military and police roles under his belt, Patrick was 100 percent right for Agent John Doggett, described by Carter in Entertainment Weekly as "this hard-boiled cop, salt-of-the-earth Everyman, who was going to be a nonbeliever to the core." Thus, Doggett joined forces with Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in her search for Mulder and the maintenance of the X-files.

On top of his TV coup, Patrick will be a ubiquitous presence in cineplexes. In winter 2000, he plays the father of John Grady (Matt Damon) in Billy Bob Thornton's All the Pretty Horses. Then, in 2001, Patrick pairs up with Stallone in the action-thriller Eye See You, followed by the kiddie comedy Spy Kids, with Antonio Banderas. Texas Rangers, co-starring Dawson Creek cutie James Van Der Beek, and Backflash Blues, featuring Jennifer Esposito, are also in the pipeline.

As Scully and X-philes acclimate to the new fed on the block, and as plans for another Terminator installment circulate, it isn't known if Patrick will have the time or the desire to take on T-1000 again. But be it Doggett, the cybervillain, or any future part, Patrick keeps a level head. "You can't think about how people will perceive you or your character," he said in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer. "All you can do is focus on your work. The rest is up to the universe."

— Laurell Haapanen

TV Appearances 
The X-Files — 2000 (Series)
The Sopranos — 2000 (Series; episodes)
Perfect Assassins — 1998 (Movie)
Superman — 1996 (Series; episode)
The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest — 1996 (Series; voice)
The Outer Limits — 1996 (Series; episode)
The Outer Limits — 1995 (Series; episode)
Body Language — 1995 (Movie)
Tales From the Crypt — 1992 (Series; episode)