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.