Tom Skerritt, star of Top Gun and Alien, dies at 93

Tom Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor best known as the flight instructor Viper in “Top Gun,” the doomed captain in “Alien” and the small-town sheriff on TV’s “Picket Fences,” has died at 93. His family said he died Wednesday of natural causes, The Associated Press reported.

In a statement, his family said the public knew him for his acting career, but they knew him for his humour, curiosity and generosity, and for his care for veterans, storytelling and the natural world. NPR, The Guardian and People also reported his death on Thursday, and “Tom Skerritt” became one of the most searched terms in Canada on Google over the past day.

Skerritt won the Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1993 for “Picket Fences,” the David E. Kelley series in which he played Sheriff Jimmy Brock opposite Kathy Baker. The show ran from 1992 to 1996 and won 14 Emmy Awards, according to the AP.

Born in Detroit, Skerritt spent four years in the U.S. Air Force before studying at Wayne State University and then film at UCLA. His first film role came in the 1962 Korean War drama “War Hunt,” which also marked the screen debuts of Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola.

He worked for years in supporting parts, including small roles in Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” and “Thieves Like Us” and Hal Ashby’s “Harold and Maude.” His career turned with “The Turning Point” in 1977, followed by “Alien” in 1979, where he played Captain Dallas of the spaceship Nostromo.

To a wider audience he was Cmdr. Mike “Viper” Metcalf, the instructor who welcomes Tom Cruise’s class to the Top Gun school in the 1986 film. Later roles included Sally Field’s husband in “Steel Magnolias,” a scheming official in “Contact” and the stern minister in Redford’s “A River Runs Through It.”

On television he also played William Walker on “Brothers & Sisters,” had a recurring role on “Cheers” and appeared on “Leverage.” He made his Broadway debut in 2013 in an adaptation of John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill.”

Skerritt once told The Ottawa Citizen, in a 1992 interview the AP cited, that he had wanted to direct but kept being cast as an actor, and that he had no regrets. He did direct and star in the 1997 TV movie “Divided by Hate.”

He is survived by his wife, Julie Tokashiki, and five children, the AP reported.

Hockey fans lost another familiar name this week: Sudbury-born former New York Rangers star Ron Duguay died at 69. For more on what Canadians are watching this fall, see the Billboard Canada honourees.

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Sources: The Associated Press via The Canadian Press; NPR; The Guardian.