lit a candle 10h ago93 years old. Duke Forrest in M*A*S*H, 1970. That's a run.
Their story
Tom Skerritt, the rangy, mustached character actor whose career spanned more than six decades and over 170 film and television productions, died on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, at the age of 93. His family announced that he died of natural causes. He was remembered by audiences as the steady, authoritative…
Tom Skerritt, the rangy, mustached character actor whose career spanned more than six decades and over 170 film and television productions, died on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, at the age of 93. His family announced that he died of natural causes. He was remembered by audiences as the steady, authoritative presence inside some of the most beloved ensembles in American film, from Robert Altman's M*A*S*H and Ridley Scott's Alien to Top Gun and A River Runs Through It, and by television viewers as Sheriff Jimmy Brock on Picket Fences, the role that won him a Primetime Emmy Award.
Thomas Roy Skerritt was born in Detroit, Michigan, on August 25, 1933, the youngest of three children of Helen, a homemaker, and Roy Skerritt, a businessman. After graduating from Detroit's Mackenzie High School in 1951 he enlisted in the United States Air Force, hoping to see the world. He spent most of his four-year tour as a classification specialist at Bergstrom Field in Austin, Texas. Back in Michigan he studied at Henry Ford College and Wayne State University, then moved to the University of California, Los Angeles, intending to become a writer or director. He acted partly to overcome his shyness, and a community stage appearance in The Rainmaker caught the eye of producers Terry and Denis Sanders, who cast him in the Korean War drama War Hunt (1962) alongside John Saxon, Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford. He left UCLA without a degree.
Through the 1960s he worked constantly in television, turning up on Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Death Valley Days (where he once played a young Mark Twain), 12 O'Clock High, Combat!, The Fugitive, The Virginian and many more. His breakthrough came in 1970 as the Southern surgeon Duke Forrest in Altman's M*A*S*H, one of the most popular films of the year. Skerritt credited Altman with teaching him that an actor must be willing to risk looking foolish. He reunited with Altman for Thieves Like Us (1974), played a motorcycle cop in Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude under the joke credit "M. Borman", and appeared in Wild Rovers, Fuzz and Big Bad Mama. When his career stalled in a run of European westerns, his agent Meyer Mishkin helped him land The Turning Point (1977), in which he played Shirley MacLaine's husband and won the National Board of Review award for best supporting actor.
The late 1970s and 1980s brought his most recognisable roles: Strawberry, the shell-shocked veteran in Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke, the father of a young figure skater in Ice Castles, and Captain Dallas, commander of the doomed Nostromo, in Alien (1979), a part he accepted only after seeing Ridley Scott's The Duellists. He followed with The Dead Zone (1983), SpaceCamp (1986), Steel Magnolias (1989), Poltergeist III and, most famously, Commander Mike "Viper" Metcalf, the instructor who tests Tom Cruise's Maverick in Top Gun (1986). In 1992 Robert Redford cast him as the Reverend Maclean, the fly-fishing Presbyterian minister and father at the heart of A River Runs Through It.
On television he played Evan Drake, Rebecca Howe's suave boss, in the sixth season of Cheers, and from 1992 to 1996 he starred as Sheriff Jimmy Brock, the calm voice of reason in David E. Kelley's quirky CBS drama Picket Fences. He won the 1993 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, was nominated again in 1994, and received two Golden Globe nominations. Later work included Contact (1997), the TBS remake of High Noon (2000), Tears of the Sun (2003), Brothers and Sisters, Leverage, a cameo as himself in Ted (2012), Lucky (2017) with his Alien castmate Harry Dean Stanton, and a rare late leading role as a dying heart surgeon in East of the Mountains (2021). In 2012 he played the title role in Pacific Northwest Ballet's Don Quixote, and in 2022 the International Press Academy gave him its Mary Pickford Award.
Skerritt made his home in the Seattle area and devoted much of his later life to storytelling as service. He co-founded TheFilmSchool in Seattle in 2002 with screenwriter Stewart Stern, founded the Seattle digital media company Heyou Media, and in the early 2010s co-founded the Red Badge Project with former Army captain Evan Baily, a program that helps veterans work through PTSD, anxiety and depression by writing and sharing their experiences. Inspired partly by A River Runs Through It, he also championed river conservation through the documentary series Reflections of the River and partnerships with American Rivers and the Gallatin River Task Force.
He was married three times: to Charlotte Shanks from 1957 to 1972, to Sue Oran from 1977 to 1992, and to Julie Tokashiki from 1998 until his death. He is survived by Julie, his children Andy, Erin, Matt, Collin and Emiko, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. "While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career," his family said, "we knew him for his humor, curiosity, wisdom, generosity and the love he brought into our lives." The place of his death and memorial plans had not been made public when this page was written.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); The Hollywood Reporter obituary by Chris Koseluk (2026-10-22); ABC7 (2026-10-22); CBS News (2024-05-25); University of Washington College of Arts and Sciences (2015); The Sea.
In their own words
“I just loved the guy from the first. He made me realize early on that you could do no wrong, as long as you tried. The worst you could do was make an ass out of yourself. And that's the first thing you have to be willing to do as an actor, be willing to make an ass out of yourself. Bob gave me that.”
On Robert Altman, in Mitchell Zuckoff's Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (2009)
“So I went to see The Duellists. And it was a masterpiece. Magnificent-looking film, a painting from beginning to end. So I had to do Alien at that point.”
On joining Alien, from the documentary Alien Evolution (2001)
“You can't be a filmmaker purely by going to the university, as you know. The practical knowledge, the street knowledge you can gain by being on a set, being around that, being around the way people talk, the way they approach the business, was really the benefit I saw in it from the beginning.”
Film Comment interview, 2016
“It starts with that wanting to help someone else rather than talking about it. I just got tired of talking about this if I could do something about it.”
On the Red Badge Project, CBS News, 2024
“We know how to tell a story and how to teach people to tell a story. We should do something.”
To novelist Shawn Wong about helping veterans, as reported by the University of Washington
Photos
1by People Forever
From social media
5Posts by Tom, and posts about them, kept here so they are not lost.