Actor Tom Skerritt, star of Alien and Top Gun, dies at 93
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Actor Tom Skerritt’s Hollywood career spanned from the 1960s to the 2020s.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- Tom Skerritt, star of ‘Alien’, ‘Top Gun’ and ‘MASH’, has died at 93 from natural causes, his family and manager said.
- His breakthrough came in ‘MASH’, and he later won praise for ‘Alien’, where he backed strong female lead Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver.
- Skerritt had a long film and TV career from the 1960s to the 2020s, including ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Picket Fences’, for which he won an Emmy in 1993.
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LOS ANGELES – Versatile actor Tom Skerritt, who starred in Hollywood mega hits including the science-fiction classic Alien, the war comedy M*A*S*H and the action drama Top Gun, has died at the age of 93, his manager confirmed.
Skerritt, a Detroit native whose Hollywood career spanned from the 1960s to the 2020s, died on Oct 21 of natural causes, said media outlet ABC7, citing a statement from his family.
Known for his rugged good looks and ability to shine in a variety of genres, Skerritt delivered memorable performances in leading and supporting roles in film and television.
Skerritt’s breakthrough role was a roguish US Army surgeon in director Robert Altman’s 1970 Korean War black comedy M*A*S*H, a film whose ensemble cast also included Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould and Sally Kellerman.
Skerritt played southerner Duke Forrest as the doctors at the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital stitched up wounded troops.
The film, whose popularity coincided with American unease over the Vietnam War, was nominated for five Academy Awards.
In director Ridley Scott’s claustrophobic 1979 sci-fi horror Alien, Skerritt played Dallas, the captain of an ill-fated spacecraft whose crew encounters a deadly parasitic extraterrestrial creature with a surrealist look and a bad attitude.
In the film’s famous and bloody “chestburster” scene, Skerritt’s character is seated next to castmate John Hurt when a baby alien violently exits the torso of Hurt’s character.
Alien, an influential masterpiece whose ensemble cast also included Sigourney Weaver and Ian Holm, earned two Oscar nominations.
“It is spontaneity and impulse that make the difference, and that is what I felt we had with Alien. Every one of us had that immediate rapport with one another – the respect that I had for the other actors and the respect that they had for me,” Skerritt told interviewer Peter Sobczynski in 2019, while also lauding Scott’s directorial brilliance.
Alien was one of several films in which Skerritt appeared that featured strong female characters, in this case Weaver’s courageous character Ripley. That was considered pioneering at the time.
“When I read the script, one of the things that I liked most about it was that the woman becomes the hero. I loved that,” Skerritt said.
“The sight of women being in positions of strength and fortitude to make the right connections and decisions was what appealed to me. I experienced that as well in Steel Magnolias, with the women in that. I liked the idea of women being tough and strong and influential.”
In Steel Magnolias (1989), Skerritt played Drum Eatenton, husband of Sally Field’s M’Lynn Eatenton.
Tony Scott, the brother of the Alien director, cast Skerritt in the key supporting role of naval aviation instructor Viper Metcalf in the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun that helped star Tom Cruise soar into Hollywood’s stratosphere.
Skerritt also played Shirley MacLaine’s husband in director Herbert Ross’ 1977 ballet drama The Turning Point, and starred alongside another emerging star, Brad Pitt, in Robert Redford’s beautifully shot 1992 period drama A River Runs Through It.
Among other films in which he appeared were: Harold And Maude (1971), Ice Castles (1978), The Dead Zone (1983), Poltergeist III (1988), Contact (1997), Tears Of The Sun (2003) and Ted (2012).
On the small screen, Skerritt starred in the offbeat CBS series Picket Fences from 1992 to 1996, playing a Wisconsin town sheriff and claiming an Emmy as outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1993.
Born on Aug 25, 1933, in Detroit, Skerritt served in the US Air Force before becoming an actor, making his film debut in 1962 alongside a young Redford in War Hunt. He was a father of five children and was married three times. REUTERS