Tom Skerritt obituary

US actor who often played authority figures and was admired for his film roles in Alien, Top Gun and A River Runs Through It

The lean, rugged US actor Tom Skerritt, who has died aged 93, was described by one screenwriter as “a character actor trapped in a leading man’s body”. He took significant roles as authority figures in the films Alien, Top Gun and A River Runs Through It before landing star billing in the 1990s TV family drama Picket Fences, as a sheriff trying to keep the peace in a rural Wisconsin town plagued by violent – and bizarre – crimes.

Skerritt’s breakthrough had come in the 1970 film M*A*S*H, directed by Robert Altman. He played Augustus “Duke” Forrest, a US army surgeon in the Korean war exuding southern charm at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. Along with his fellow surgeons, Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce (played by Donald Sutherland) and “Trapper” John McIntyre (Elliott Gould), Duke displayed cynicism and irreverence towards his superiors.

But Skerritt’s character was not transferred to the TV series that followed. While some sources reported that the actor had no faith in the film working as a half-hour sitcom, the writer Larry Gelbart, who adapted the novel for the small screen with Gene Reynolds, explained they wanted characters they felt could generate storylines, adding: “Trapper John just seemed more colourful than Duke.”

Skerritt remained prolific in character roles in films and on TV until coming to worldwide attention as the doomed Captain Dallas, in charge of the commercial space tug Nostromo, in the sci-fi horror movie Alien (1979), which made a star of Sigourney Weaver.

He initially turned down the role, but changed his mind when he heard that it was to be directed by Ridley Scott, whose debut film, the Napoleonic wars drama The Duellists (1977), he regarded as a “classic … a painting from beginning to end”.

Skerritt appeared alongside another actor reaching star status, Tom Cruise, in Top Gun (1986), directed by Ridley’s brother Tony Scott. He played Mike “Viper” Metcalf, mentoring the fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) in the elite US navy school.

His own slow-burn rise to stardom was boosted by his part in A River Runs Through It (1992) as the Presbyterian minister who finds a bond with his sons (Craig Sheffer and Brad Pitt) through fly-fishing. It provoked the Hollywood Reporter to observe that “he has one of his richest roles in years as their emotionally cut-off father”.

The film, directed by Robert Redford, came out at the same time as Picket Fences (1992-96) was launched. This time, Skerritt was playing a warm, loving father, Jimmy Brock, a small-town sheriff married to Jill (Kathy Baker), a psychiatrist, with three children, in Rome, Wisconsin. “We’re the ones with whom the audience might most relate to – because all these other folks are crazy!” he said.

The quirky and daring storylines included cows’ udders exploding, animal sacrifice and date rape and tackled taboo subjects such as euthanasia, abortion, incest and homophobia – groundbreaking for peak-time US television at the time.

Skerritt’s performance won him a Primetime Emmy award as outstanding lead actor in a drama series and he was kept firmly in the public eye during the programme’s four runs. “I’ve never really been comfortable with celebrity,” he said, while admitting that Jimmy Brock was another role he had initially turned down before being won over by the storylines. When the series ended, he returned to guest roles on TV and supporting parts in films in a hard-working career in which he portrayed almost 200 screen characters.

Skerritt was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Roy Skerritt, a business executive, and his wife, Helen (nee Maybee). On leaving Mackenzie high school, he served in the US air force as a classification specialist (1951-55) before studying English, first at Wayne State University, then at UCLA (the University of California Los Angeles), where he took up acting. The director Denis Sanders and his brother, the producer Terry Sanders, spotted Skerritt in a stage production of The Rainmaker and cast him as a soldier in War Hunt (1962), alongside Redford.

Dozens of one-off TV roles followed such as My Three Sons (in 1963), Wagon Train (in 1964) and The Fugitive (two parts, in 1966 and 1967) before his appearance in M*A*S*H meant he was switching between the big and small screens.

He was a motorcycle cop in the film Harold and Maude (1971), choosing to be credited as Martin Bormann (the name of Hitler’s private secretary). “We did silly things in those days,” he explained.

Skerritt then played Shelley Duvall’s father, a mechanic, in Thieves Like Us (1974), reuniting him with Altman; Shirley Maclaine’s husband, a retired ballet dancer, in The Turning Point (1977); a Vietnam veteran in the cult classic Up in Smoke (1978), alongside Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong; and Sally Field’s good-hearted husband, also the father of Julia Roberts, in Steel Magnolias (1989).

On TV, he was Kirstie Alley’s suave former boss, Evan Drake, in the sixth series of Cheers (1987-88), Joe Kennedy in Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (2000) and General William Westmoreland in Path to War (2002). He played Field’s husband again, this time deceased and appearing in flashback, in the first three series of Brothers & Sisters (2006-09).

Skerritt’s first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, Julie (nee Tokashiki), whom he married in 1998, and their daughter, Emi, as well as by Andy, Dan and Erin, the children of his first marriage, to Charlotte Shanks, and Colin, the son from the second, to Sue Oran.