Mark Kennedy
Tom Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor who embodied a solid, wry authority figure as a flight instructor in Top Gun, a tough-but-fair sheriff on TV’s Picket Fences or the doomed captain of Alien, has died. He was 93.
Skerritt died on Wednesday of natural causes, his family said in a statement. “While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career, we knew him for his humour, curiosity, wisdom, generosity and the love he brought into our lives. He cared deeply about imagination, creativity, storytelling, service, veterans, the natural world and helping others find and share their own voices,” the statement said.
Skerritt grew up in a middle-class Detroit family and spent four years in the air force, attended Wayne State University and then switched to the University of California, Los Angeles, and was inspired to study filmmaking after viewing Citizen Kane.
His performance in a Los Angeles theatre production of The Rainmaker led to his first film role – a supporting role as a sergeant in the 1962 scrappy, $250,000 independent Korean War film War Hunt. The movie marked the debut of not just Skerritt, but also legends Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola.
Redford and Skerritt were vying for the same lead role, with the former winning out. Years later, Redford, now directing, paid Skerritt back with compound interest in A River Runs Through It, handing him the plum role of the stern Reverend John Maclean, a minister whose governing passions are his faith and fly-fishing.
Redford, who died last year, became a lifelong friend. “There was such a deep connection we made with each other that it matured into a level-headed friendship,” Redford told The Seattle Times in 2007.
When Skeritt booked a role in Alien as the beleaguered and doomed captain of the ship Nostromo, his career moved quickly, including a memorable role as Tom Cruise’s instructor in the landmark Top Gun.
“Gentlemen, you are the top 1 per cent of all Naval aviators. The elite. The best of the best. We’ll make you better,” he told the Top Gun students. “This school is about combat. There are no points for second place.”
Skerritt was twice nominated for an Emmy for Picket Fences, and other career highlights included playing the patient husband of Shirley MacLaine in Turning Point, Sally Field’s husband in Steel Magnolias and a scheming opportunist who stands in the way of Jodie Foster’s attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life in Contact.
“A writer once described me as a character actor locked in a leading man’s body, and I’ve always loved that. It’s a nice compliment. I’ve been able to walk the line between television and features,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1997.
Skerritt also modelled for Guess jeans, but directing and writing – his initial dream – had been overtaken by a career in front of the camera, though he managed to direct and star in the 1997 television movie Divided by Hate.
“Things happen,” he told The Ottawa Citizen in 1992. “You get hired for a film and the roles kept coming for me. I kept telling myself that if I stuck with acting it would be a really good training for what the problems are in directing.
“Then the family came along, and I had to support them. The years flew by and there was a time when I said I would give up acting and really try to get into directing. But it hasn’t worked out that way and I have no regrets.”
He is survived by his third wife, Julie Tokashiki, and five children.
AP