Emmy-winning actor Tom Skerritt, with roles in Alien and Top Gun, dies at 93
Tom Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor who embodied a solid, wry authority figure, whether as a flight instructor in Top Gun, a tough-but-fair sheriff on TV’s Picket Fences or the doomed captain of Alien, has died. He was 93.
Skerritt died Wednesday of natural causes, his family said in a statement
Mark Kennedy · The Associated Press
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Tom Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor who embodied a solid, wry authority figure — whether as a flight instructor in Top Gun, a tough-but-fair sheriff on TV's Picket Fences or the doomed captain of Alien — has died. He was 93.
Skerritt died Wednesday of natural causes, his family said in a statement.
"While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career, we knew him for his humour, curiosity, wisdom, generosity and the love he brought into our lives. He cared deeply about imagination, creativity, storytelling, service, veterans, the natural world and helping others find and share their own voices," the statement said.
Skerritt was twice nominated for an Emmy — both for Picket Fences, winning outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1993. Other career highlights included playing Shirley MacLaine's patient husband in The Turning Point, Sally Field's husband in Steel Magnolias and a scheming opportunist who stands in the way of Jodie Foster's attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life in Contact.
From left, Tom Skerritt, David E. Kelley, creator of Picket Fences, and actor Kathy Baker after the show won best drama series during the 45th annual Emmy Awards in Pasadena, Calif., on Sept. 19, 1993. (Douglas C. Pizac/AP Photo)
"A writer once described me as a character actor locked in a leading man's body, and I've always loved that. It's a nice compliment. I've been able to walk the line between television and features," he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1997.
Onstage, he was the narrator in Our Town at Seattle's Intiman Theatre in 2004 and made his Broadway debut in 2013 in an adaptation of John Grisham's A Time to Kill, in which The Associated Press wrote that he "nicely pulls off a charming, disgraced and drunken lawyer."
Skerritt's early life
Skerritt grew up in a middle-class family in Detroit. His father a small businessman and his mother a housewife. He had two brothers; a sister died as a child.
He spent four years in the Air Force, attended Wayne State University and then switched to the University of California, Los Angeles, to study filmmaking, inspired by Citizen Kane.
His performance in a Los Angeles theatre production of The Rainmaker led to his first film role — a supporting part as a sergeant in the scrappy, $250,000 independent Korean War film War Hunt in 1962. The movie marked the debuts of Skerritt, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola.
Redford and Skerritt had been vying for the same lead role, with Redford winning out. Years later, Redford, now directing, cast Skerritt in A River Runs Through It, as the stern Rev. John Maclean, a minister whose governing passions are his faith and fly-fishing. The New York Times praised his "halting, thoughtful manner."
Redford, who died last year, became a lifelong friend. "There was such a deep connection we made with each other that it matured into a level-headed friendship," Redford told the Seattle Times in 2007. "His values were close to mine, and he kept his integrity."
Alien and Top Gun
The cast of Alien poses on set. From left, actors John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright, Tom Skerritt, Yaphet Kotto, Sigourney Weaver, Harry Dean Stanton and Ian Holm are pictured in 1979. (Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)
After War Hunt, Skerritt struggled for screen time, landing a small role in M*A*S*H and Thieves Like Us for Robert Altman, and a bit part as a motorcycle cop in Harold and Maude for Hal Ashby.
Things changed with The Turning Point, which earned him a National Board of Review award. Then came Alien, with Skerritt playing the beleaguered and doomed captain of the Nostromo, crouched in a dark, claustrophobic duct while hunting the alien with a sputtering flamethrower. He told the Seattle Times that what appealed to him in the script was that the lead actor disappeared and "the woman becomes the hero. I really like that idea."
Then came another memorable role as Tom Cruise's instructor in the landmark Top Gun: "Gentlemen, you are the top one per cent of all Naval aviators. The elite. The best of the best. We'll make you better," he told the students. "This school is about combat. There are no points for second place."
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Skerritt achieved perhaps his best notices as the kindly sheriff in Picket Fences, a drama created by David E. Kelley that won 14 Emmy Awards — including one for Skerritt — and a Golden Globe over its four-year run from 1992 to 1996.
Skerritt co-starred opposite Kathy Baker, who played his doctor wife, in the community of Rome, Wisconsin, a place of bizarre happenings, including a robber who left a trail of frogs and the pope becoming the primary witness to a murder.
"It was written by the best writer on television," he told the A.V. Club in 2019. "That was the magic and brilliance of it. Because I wasn't trying to do a series, but then they said Kathy Baker was going to do it, and I thought, 'She's fabulous — what do they want me for?'"
Tom Skerritt with his wife Julie Tokashiki in Geneva, Switzerland in 2012. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for IWC)
On the small screen, Skerritt played William Walker on ABC's Brothers & Sisters, Jimmy Ford on TNT's Leverage and the recurring character Evan Drake on Cheers. He starred in the Hallmark movie What the Deaf Man Heard, alongside Matthew Modine, Judith Ivey and James Earl Jones. He also modelled for Guess jeans.
Directing and writing — his initial dream — had been overtaken by a career in front of the camera, though he managed to direct and star in the 1997 television movie Divided by Hate.
"Things happen," he told The Ottawa Citizen in 1992. "You get hired for a film and the roles kept coming for me. I kept telling myself that if I stuck with acting it would be a really good training for what the problems are in directing. Then the family came along and I had to support them. The years flew by and there was a time when I said I would give up acting and really try to get into directing. But it hasn't worked out that way and I have no regrets."
He is survived by his third wife, Julie Tokashiki, and five children.
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