Tom Skerritt 1933 – 2026

Biography

Tom Skerritt was an American actor whose quiet authority and everyman warmth made him one of the most dependable screen presences of the past sixty years. Born August 25, 1933, in Detroit, Michigan, he served in the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s before studying at Wayne State University and UCLA and turning to acting, originally to learn the craft from the inside while he pursued writing.

He made his film debut in War Hunt (1962) and spent the 1960s in television westerns such as Gunsmoke and Bonanza before his breakthrough as the roguish surgeon Duke Forrest in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970). In 1979 he played Dallas, captain of the Nostromo, in Ridley Scott’s Alien, still his most famous role, and in 1986 he was Mike “Viper” Metcalf, the flight instructor who taught Tom Cruise’s Maverick in Top Gun. His long list of memorable films includes Harold and Maude, The Dead Zone, Steel Magnolias, Contact, and A River Runs Through It, in which he played the Reverend Maclean.

On television he won the 1993 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series as Sheriff Jimmy Brock on Picket Fences, earning two Golden Globe nominations, and he played Evan Drake, Rebecca Howe’s boss, on Cheers. A devoted advocate for veterans and young storytellers, he co-founded The Film School in Seattle, and he kept working into his nineties, appearing in the western Broke in 2025. Tom Skerritt died of natural causes on October 21, 2026, at the age of 93. He is survived by his wife, Julie, and his children. Memorial and burial details have not yet been announced.