THE NEW YORK TIMES: Tom Skerritt remembered for his iconic roles in Top Gun, Alien, MASH and Steel Magnolias
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Tom Skerritt’s rugged good looks, commanding presence and versatility led to key roles in M*A*S*H”and Steel Magnolias, and he won an Emmy on Picket Fences
Tom Skerritt, the affable, generally soft-spoken, simultaneously folksy and commanding Emmy Award-winning actor whose best-known roles were in films as different as M*A*S*H, Alien and Steel Magnolias, died Wednesday. He was 93.
The family announced the death in a statement but provided no further details.
Skerritt was a familiar and complex screen presence for almost six decades. In Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970), he was Duke Forrest, a boyish, martini-drinking Army surgeon, a laid-back guy, perhaps not as flamboyantly iconoclastic as some of his colleagues. He shared their worldview, however. Watching another character, Major Frank Burns, being taken away in a straitjacket, he offered his superior officer a thought: “If I nail Hot Lips and punch Hawkeye, can I go home?”
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After that, he tended to play strong authority figures — lawmen, military types, confident fathers — who seemed innately, unrelentingly American. In Alien (1979), he was the common-sense spaceship captain, a reluctant hero who did the right thing when a monster was on the loose. In Top Gun (1986), he was Viper, the hard-nosed flight instructor who told Tom Cruise’s character, “That’s pretty arrogant,” then added, “I like that in a pilot.” But Viper spoke compassionately to the young man about his dead father.
In The Turning Point (1977), he was Shirley MacLaine’s solid, understanding husband — a New York dancer turned Oklahoma City husband, father and ballet teacher. He won the National Board of Review’s best supporting actor award for the role. And in A River Runs Through It (1992), he was a stern Presbyterian minister, the father of Brad Pitt’s character, who loved fly-fishing in rural early-20th-century Montana.
Playing a small-town Wisconsin sheriff on the primetime CBS series Picket Fences (1992-96) made Skerritt a household name and brought him an Emmy for best lead actor in a drama series. Some wondered, however, if drama was the right category. In one unlikely episode of the show, created by David E. Kelley, the pope came to town and witnessed a murder. In others, an obese woman killed her husband by sitting on him, the mayor shot a carjacker, and a cow somehow gave birth to a human baby.
“It was a wonderful satire, though I don’t know if it was always seen as that,” Skerritt told Film Comment in 2016.
Thomas Roy Skerritt was born August 25, 1933, in Detroit, the youngest of three sons of Roy Skerritt, who was described as a salesman in the 1940 census and Helen (Maybee) Skerritt.
After high school, Tom Skerritt spent four years in the Air Force, where he spent four years. Back in Detroit, with the help of the GI Bill, he entered Wayne State University as an English major and took art classes at night. Growing interested in film school and in directing, he transferred to UCLA, where he did theatre on and off campus. In his last semester, he was cast in the Korean War combat movie War Hunt (1962). The ensemble cast also included Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack, unknowns who became stars, close friends and mentors.
During the 60s, Skerritt appeared mostly on television series — among them Combat! (Altman directed 10 episodes of the show), Death Valley Days, 12 O’Clock High and The Virginian.
TV was a significant part of his career in later years, too. Playing some 40 roles in series, miniseries and TV movies in the 2000s, he was seen as recurring characters on Cheers (Kirstie Alley’s debonair, desirable, rich boss) and Brothers & Sisters” (the dead husband who returned in flashbacks).
“For a long time, I kept resisting acting as a profession,” Skerritt told Film Comment. “There was something about the totality of visual storytelling that appealed to me,” so he remained more interested in directing and writing.
He developed an ulterior motive. In the same interview, he recalled deciding that acting jobs would be “a great way to learn how to be a director.” Ultimately, he did direct a handful of television series episodes, mostly in the ’90s.
In addition to his most famous portrayals, he appeared in another three dozen or so films, including Steel Magnolias (1989), as Julia Roberts’ irreverent Louisiana father; Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us (1974), as Shelley Duvall’s father, a gas-station owner; The Dead Zone (1983), as a small-town New England sheriff; and the science fiction drama Contact (1997), as a scheming presidential adviser.
Skerritt married Charlotte Shanks in 1957. They had three children and divorced in 1972. He and his second wife, Susan Ellen Aran, had one child and a 14-year marriage (1976-90). In 1998, he married Julie Tokashiki, and they had one child.
His decades of work in TV and film left him clear-eyed about the industry and the effect that one’s appearance can have on a career.
“Years ago, someone said that I was a character actor locked in a leading man’s body,” he told People in 1993. “I thought that was a wonderful compliment.”
Originally published as Tom Skerritt Has Died. He Was Viper in ‘Top Gun’ and the Captain in ‘Alien.’
