Tom Skerritt, the affable, generally soft-spoken, simultaneously folksy and commanding Emmy Award-winning actor whose best-known roles were in films as different as “M*A*S*H,” “Alien” and “Steel Magnolias,” died on Wednesday. He was 93.
The family announced the death in a statement but provided no further details.
Mr. Skerritt was a familiar and complex screen presence for almost six decades. In Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” (1970), he was Duke Forrest, a boyish, martini-drinking Army surgeon, a laid-back guy, perhaps not as flamboyantly iconoclastic as some of his colleagues. He shared their worldview, however. Watching another character, Maj. Frank Burns, being taken away in a straitjacket, he offered his superior officer a thought: “If I nail Hot Lips and punch Hawkeye, can I go home?”
After that, he tended to play strong authority figures — lawmen, military types, confident fathers — who seemed innately, unrelentingly American. In “Alien” (1979), he was the common-sense spaceship captain, a reluctant hero who did the right thing when a monster was on the loose. In “Top Gun” (1986), he was Viper, the hard-nosed flight instructor who told Tom Cruise’s character, “That’s pretty arrogant,” then added, “I like that in a pilot.” But Viper spoke compassionately to the young man about his dead father.
In “The Turning Point” (1977), he was Shirley MacLaine’s solid, understanding husband — a New York dancer turned Oklahoma City husband, father and ballet teacher. He won the National Board of Review’s best supporting actor award for the role. And in “A River Runs Through It” (1992), he was a stern Presbyterian minister, the father of Brad Pitt’s character, who loved fly-fishing in rural early-20th-century Montana.
Playing a small-town Wisconsin sheriff on the prime-time CBS series “Picket Fences” (1992-96) made Mr. Skerritt a household name and brought him an Emmy for best lead actor in a drama series. Some wondered, however, if drama was the right category. In one unlikely episode of the show, created by David E. Kelley, the pope came to town and witnessed a murder. In others, an obese woman killed her husband by sitting on him, the mayor shot a carjacker, and a cow somehow gave birth to a human baby.
“It was a wonderful satire, though I don’t know if it was always seen as that,” Mr. Skerritt told Film Comment in 2016.
Thomas Roy Skerritt was born on Aug. 25, 1933, in Detroit, the youngest of three sons of Roy Skerritt, who was described as a salesman in the 1940 census, and Helen (Maybee) Skerritt.
Right after high school, Tom enlisted in the Air Force, where he spent four years. Back in Detroit, with the help of the G.I. Bill, he entered Wayne State University as an English major and took art classes at night. Growing interested in film school and in directing, he transferred to U.C.L.A., where he did theater on and off campus. In his last semester, he was cast in the Korean War combat movie “War Hunt” (1962). The ensemble cast also included Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack, unknowns who became stars, close friends and mentors.
During the 1960s, Mr. Skerritt appeared mostly on television series — among them “Combat!” (Mr. Altman directed 10 episodes of the show), “Death Valley Days,” “12 O’Clock High” and “The Virginian.”
Television was a significant part of his career in later years, too. Playing some 40 roles in series, mini-series and TV movies in the 2000s, he was seen as recurring characters on “Cheers” (Kirstie Alley’s debonair, desirable, rich boss) and “Brothers & Sisters” (the dead husband who returned in flashbacks).
“For a long time, I kept resisting acting as a profession,” Mr. Skerritt told Film Comment. “There was something about the totality of visual storytelling that appealed to me,” so he remained more interested in directing and writing.
He developed an ulterior motive. In the same interview, he recalled deciding that acting jobs would be “a great way to learn how to be a director.” Ultimately, he did direct a handful of television series episodes, mostly in the ’90s.
In addition to his most famous portrayals, he appeared in another three dozen or so films, including “Steel Magnolias” (1989), as Julia Roberts’s irreverent Louisiana father; Robert Altman’s “Thieves Like Us” (1974), as Shelley Duvall’s father, a gas-station owner; “The Dead Zone” (1983), as a small-town New England sheriff; and the science fiction drama “Contact” (1997), as a scheming presidential adviser.
Mr. Skerritt married Charlotte Shanks in 1957. They had three children and divorced in 1972. He and his second wife, Susan Ellen Aran, had one child and a 14-year marriage (1976-90). In 1998, he married Julie Tokashiki, and they had one child.
Information about his survivors was not immediately available.
His decades of work in TV and film left him cleareyed about the industry, and the effect that one’s appearance can have on a career.
“Years ago, someone said that I was a character actor locked in a leading man’s body,” he told People magazine in 1993. “I thought that was a wonderful compliment.”
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