Tom Skerritt, the actor whose quiet authority anchored films from “Alien” to “Top Gun” and who won an Emmy for the CBS drama “Picket Fences,” has died. He was 93.
Skerritt died of natural causes on Wednesday, according to a statement from a representative reported by NPR. His publicist confirmed the death to CBS News on Thursday.
“We are heartbroken by his loss,” his family said. “While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career, we knew him for his humor, curiosity, wisdom, generosity, and the love he brought into our lives.”
From Detroit to Hollywood
Skerritt grew up in a middle-class family in Detroit. He served four years in the Air Force, studied at Wayne State University and then moved to the University of California, Los Angeles, to study filmmaking after being inspired by “Citizen Kane,” CBS News reported.
A stage performance in “The Rainmaker” in Los Angeles led to his first film part, a sergeant in the 1962 low-budget Korean War drama “War Hunt.” The film also marked the screen debuts of Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola. Skerritt and Redford had competed for the same lead role, which Redford won. Decades later, Redford, by then a director, cast Skerritt as the stern Rev. John Maclean in “A River Runs Through It.”
The two remained lifelong friends. “His values were close to mine, and he kept his integrity,” Redford, who died last year, told the Seattle Times in 2007.
A run of memorable roles
Steady screen work was slow to arrive. Skerritt took small parts in Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” and “Thieves Like Us” and played a motorcycle officer in Hal Ashby’s “Harold and Maude.” His role in “The Turning Point” earned him a National Board of Review award.
In 1979 he played Dallas, the ill-fated captain of the starship Nostromo, in Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” a film he had initially turned down because of its small budget, according to the Guardian. He later said part of the script’s appeal was that the lead actor disappeared and “the woman becomes the hero. I really like that idea.”
In 1986 he played Viper, Tom Cruise’s instructor at the Navy’s elite fighter school, in “Top Gun.” His other film credits included “The Dead Zone,” “SpaceCamp,” “Steel Magnolias,” “Contact,” “Poison Ivy,” “The Other Sister” and “Tears of the Sun.” Over a career of more than 60 years, he collected more than 170 film and television credits, the Guardian reported.
Skerritt once summed up his career with a line he credited to a writer. “A writer once described me as a character actor locked in a leading man’s body, and I’ve always loved that,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1997.
Emmy for ‘Picket Fences’
Some of his best reviews came for “Picket Fences,” David E. Kelley’s series about the offbeat town of Rome, Wisconsin, which aired from 1992 to 1996. Skerritt played Sheriff Jimmy Brock opposite Kathy Baker, who played his wife, a doctor. The show won 14 Emmy Awards, including Skerritt’s 1993 award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series.
Baker paid tribute to him on Thursday. “My heart is broken to hear of the passing of dear, lovely, loving, Tom, my TV husband, my partner, my darling friend,” she told People, as quoted by the Guardian. Julia Roberts, his co-star in “Steel Magnolias,” remembered him as “a shining light of a gentle man.”
On television he also appeared in “Cheers,” “Brothers and Sisters,” “Leverage,” “Will & Grace” and “The West Wing.” He made his Broadway debut in 2013 in an adaptation of John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill.”
Life in the Pacific Northwest
Skerritt lived in the Pacific Northwest, where he championed independent film and theater, according to NPR. In 2012 he co-founded the Red Badge Project, a program that uses storytelling to help veterans work through their experiences.
“I’m just a lucky guy, man,” he said in a 2021 interview. “Strength is measured in how you confront your weaknesses. I have had a lot of weaknesses. I still have them.”
