The Departed: Kim Manners

• Kim Manners, 1950-2009.

Manners was a fixture of The X-Files, particularly in its earlier, stronger seasons. He was the inspiration for a foulmouthed sheriff in the Darin Morgan-scripted episode "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'", which has my vote for the show's finest hour.

Manners, always one to take a weird angle on the obvious, had decided to shoot the scene at shoelace level — literally. He lied down in a puddle of cold, dank water on the cold, hard cement floor of the parking garage floor and arranged the camera dolly track so that the camera would tilt up from Davis' shoes as the Cigarette-Smoking Man dropped a lit cigarette down toward the camera and then angrily stubbed it out of his toe. Manners laughed easily, and he could curse a blue streak that would put Gordon Ramsay to shame.

He could be demanding to work for — David Duchovny once told me it took him a long time to warm to Manners, who joined The X-Files in its second, some say best season, just as the genre-bending drama was finding its feet and starting to really push the boundaries of what thriller TV could do, in the same way Rod Serling's Twilight Zone did a generation earlier.

Manners' IMDB credits.