Tom Skerritt, the Captain of Alien and Top Gun’s Viper, Has Died at 93, and Hollywood’s Tributes Say It All
Tom Skerritt, the Captain of Alien and Top Gun’s Viper, Has Died at 93, and Hollywood’s Tributes Say It All
Some actors chase fame. Tom Skerritt chased good work, and the work followed him for more than six decades. The versatile star of Alien, Top Gun, M*A*S*H and Picket Fences has died at 93, his family announced this week, leaving behind a career that touched almost every corner of American film and television.
Skerritt died on Wednesday, October 21, of natural causes, according to a family statement shared through his publicist. He was 93. The announcement immediately drew an outpouring of tributes from fans and fellow actors who remembered him as one of Hollywood’s most quietly reliable presences.
A Career Built on Quiet Authority
Before he ever stepped in front of a camera, Skerritt served a four year tour of duty in the United States Air Force. Born in Detroit, he later studied at UCLA and made his big screen debut in the 1962 war film War Hunt, appearing alongside Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack.
His breakthrough came in 1970, when Robert Altman cast him as the roguish Army surgeon Duke Forrest in the hit war comedy M*A*S*H. The film, also starring Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould and Sally Kellerman, was a major box office success and went on to earn five Academy Award nominations.
Through the 1970s, Skerritt built a resume that read like a tour of American cinema: the cult classic Harold and Maude, Altman’s Thieves Like Us, the Roger Corman comedy Big Bad Mama and the Oscar nominated ballet drama The Turning Point. But his most enduring screen moment was still to come.
The Captain and the Instructor
In 1979, Ridley Scott cast Skerritt as Captain Dallas, the steady handed commander of the ill fated commercial spacecraft Nostromo in Alien. Sharing the screen with Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt and Ian Holm, Skerritt anchored one of the most influential science fiction films ever made, right down to the film’s legendary chestburster sequence.
Years later, Skerritt admitted he had almost passed on the role entirely, telling an interviewer he initially thought the low budget production could have been directed by Ed Wood. He changed his mind, and film history is better for it. Looking back in a 2019 interview, he credited the cast’s instant connection, saying it was the spontaneity and impulse among the actors, and their mutual respect, that made the film work.
Then came 1986, and Top Gun. As Commander Mike “Viper” Metcalf, the steely flight instructor, Skerritt shared the screen with Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis in what became one of the defining blockbusters of the decade. Decades later, when the film celebrated its 30th anniversary, Skerritt noted that generation after generation had come to love the film with undiminished enthusiasm. He was right. Top Gun never really left the culture.
His filmography kept expanding through the decades: David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, the comedy drama Steel Magnolias, A River Runs Through It, where he played Reverend Maclean, the sci-fi adventure SpaceCamp, Poltergeist III and the Oscar nominated Contact.
An Emmy, a Sheriff, and Small Screen Gold
Television proved just as kind to Skerritt. On the David E. Kelley created CBS drama Picket Fences, which ran from 1992 to 1996, he played Sheriff Jimmy Brock, an aging small town lawman holding things together with unflappable authority and quiet humor. The role won him the Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1993, plus two Golden Globe nominations and three Screen Actors Guild nominations.
Earlier, he had appeared on classic series including Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone and Bonanza, and spent a season on Cheers as Rebecca Howe’s boss Evan Drake. In all, his career spanned more than 150 screen credits, an extraordinary body of work few actors ever approach.
How Hollywood Is Remembering Him
The family’s statement captured what colleagues always said about the man behind the roles: “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.”
The statement also noted the causes close to his heart: imagination, creativity, storytelling, service, veterans, the natural world, and helping others find and share their own voices. It is a fitting epitaph for an actor whose career itself was an act of service to storytelling.
Fans have been revisiting his greatest scenes online this week, from the Nostromo’s bridge to the Top Gun locker room, marveling at how one actor could bring the same grounded humanity to a spaceship captain, a fighter pilot instructor, a small town sheriff and a Montana preacher.
Skerritt’s generation of character actors rarely grabbed the spotlight, and that was exactly the point. They made everyone around them better. The lights have dimmed on one of the best of them.
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Fans of classic Hollywood should also check out our coverage of Tom Cruise’s latest box office battle, Chris Pratt’s reunion with the Terminal List cast, and Ethan Hawke’s hilarious confession about his 90s crush.
