Tom Skerritt, Steady Presence of Alien, Top Gun and Picket Fences, Dies at 93

Tom Skerritt, the actor whose weathered calm anchored films from M*A*S*H and Alien to Top Gun and A River Runs Through It, died on Wednesday. He was 93. A representative said he died of natural causes.

Skerritt specialized in a particular kind of authority. With his mustache, square jaw and unhurried manner, he was cast again and again as the man in charge: Captain Dallas in Ridley Scott’s Alien; Viper in Tony Scott’s Top Gun; small-town lawmen in David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone and on television. He also played fathers in Ice Castles, Steel Magnolias and A River Runs Through It.

His career ran more than 60 years and included more than 170 film and television credits. He won an Emmy in 1993 for playing a small-town sheriff on Picket Fences, the David E. Kelley family drama that ran for four seasons, and he received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations.

Skerritt described himself as a blue-collar kid from Detroit. He served four years in the Air Force before studying at UCLA and turning to the stage. His first film role came in the 1962 war picture War Hunt, alongside Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack, and he spent his early years in Hollywood working in television on series such as My Three Sons and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

His breakthrough came in 1970 with Robert Altman’s satire M*A*S*H, a box office hit nominated for the best picture Oscar. The decade that followed brought Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, in which he played a police officer, Altman’s Thieves Like Us and the ballet drama The Turning Point, as well as the Cheech and Chong comedy Up in Smoke.

He was not an easy sell for every part. He initially turned down Alien because of its modest budget and because no one else had yet signed on, he said in a 2019 interview, and The Guardian reported that he recalled in 2021 that the producers of Top Gun worried he was too laconic for the role before he won them over. In the 1990s he reunited with Redford on A River Runs Through It and appeared opposite Jodie Foster in Contact.

Away from the screen, Skerritt lived in the Pacific Northwest, where he promoted independent film and theater. He co-founded the Red Badge Project, which offers storytelling courses to military veterans so they can share their experiences.

Tributes came quickly. Julia Roberts, his co-star in Steel Magnolias, remembered him as a gentle man, and Kathy Baker, who played his wife on Picket Fences, said her heart was broken and called him her TV husband, her partner and her darling friend. In a statement, his family said that while the world knew him through his acting, they knew him for his humor, curiosity, wisdom and generosity.