Tom Skerritt turned down “Alien” when it was a $2 million project with almost no one attached, then wound up top-billed as the doomed captain of the Nostromo, ahead of Sigourney Weaver.
Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor who brought a lean, mustachioed authority to “Top Gun,” “M*A*S*H” and the CBS drama “Picket Fences,” died Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, of natural causes. He was 93.
“We are heartbroken by his loss,” his family said in a statement, which described an actor his relatives knew for his humor, curiosity, wisdom and generosity. His publicist confirmed the death.
He Turned Down the Nostromo
Born Aug. 25, 1933, in Detroit, Skerritt served a four-year tour of duty in the U.S. Air Force before he went after acting work. He made his film debut in the 1962 war drama “War Hunt,” alongside Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack. What followed stretched more than six decades and more than 170 big- and small-screen credits.
His breakthrough came in Robert Altman’s 1970 satire “M*A*S*H,” where he played Capt. Augustus “Duke” Forrest, one of the insubordinate Army surgeons. Skerritt took third billing, after Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould and ahead of Sally Kellerman and Robert Duvall. The film drew five Academy Award nominations, including best picture, and was adapted for television two years later.
Then came Ridley Scott’s “Alien” in 1979 and the role he had first refused, Capt. Dallas of the Nostromo. The film earned two Oscar nominations and launched a franchise of sequels, prequels and spin-offs. Seven years after that, Tony Scott cast him as Cmdr. Mike “Viper” Metcalf, chief instructor at Miramar Naval Air Station’s top gun school, where Tom Cruise’s Maverick trains in the 1986 blockbuster “Top Gun.”
An Emmy for a Small-Town Sheriff
Television handed him his most decorated part. As Sheriff Jimmy Brock in David E. Kelley’s “Picket Fences,” which ran four seasons from 1992 to 1996, Skerritt won the Primetime Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama series at the 45th annual ceremony on Sept. 19, 1993, in Pasadena, Calif., the same night co-star Kathy Baker won for lead actress. He was nominated again in 1994, shared Screen Actors Guild ensemble nominations in 1995 and 1996, and picked up a SAG nomination for male actor in a drama series in 1995.
He moved easily between series. Skerritt did a six-episode stint on “Cheers” as Evan Drake, Rebecca Howe’s boss, guest-starred on “The West Wing” as a senator, on “Law & Order: SVU” as a biased judge and on HBO’s “Huff” as the father of Hank Azaria’s title character, replacing Robert Forster. He appeared on “Will & Grace” in the 2000s, recurred on ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters” as patriarch William Walker, and turned up on “The Good Wife” in 2014 and “Madam Secretary” in 2015.
“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. The films backed him up. He played Shirley MacLaine’s husband in Herbert Ross’ 1977 ballet drama “The Turning Point,” winning the National Board of Review’s best supporting actor award; Sally Field’s husband in 1989’s “Steel Magnolias,” with Julia Roberts and Dolly Parton; the Presbyterian minister father to Brad Pitt and Craig Sheffer in Redford’s 1992 “A River Runs Through It”; and David Drumlin, the scheming opportunist blocking Jodie Foster, in “Contact.”
Elsewhere on his résumé: an uncredited motorcycle cop in “Harold and Maude,” Altman’s “Thieves Like Us,” “Big Bad Mama,” “The Devil’s Rain” with Ernest Borgnine and William Shatner, Strawberry in “Up in Smoke,” David Cronenberg’s “The Dead Zone,” “SpaceCamp,” “Poltergeist III,” “Poison Ivy,” “Tears of the Sun” and a cameo as himself in Seth MacFarlane’s 2012 comedy “Ted.” He made his Broadway debut in 2013 in an adaptation of John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill,” nine years after narrating “Our Town” at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre.
Teaching Veterans to Tell Their Stories
Seattle became the base for the work he did off camera. Skerritt helped found TheFilmSchool there to back the next generation of filmmakers and storytellers, and he co-founded the Red Badge Project, which helps veterans work through PTSD, anxiety and depression by writing and sharing their experiences. He created the documentary series “Reflections of the River” and championed river conservation, an interest sparked in part by filming “A River Runs Through It.”
His last film role came in the 2025 western drama “Broke,” opposite Dennis Quaid. Skerritt is survived by his wife, Julie Tokashiki, his third wife; his children, Andy, Erin, Matt, Collin and Emiko; five grandchildren, Sara, Maddison, Sunny, Louisa and Georgia; and two great-grandchildren, Marigold and Ravi. The family said information about a memorial will be shared at a later date.