Tom Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor whose quiet command made him one of the screen’s most trusted authority figures, died Wednesday, October 21, of natural causes. He was 93.

For more than five decades, Skerritt was the man audiences instinctively believed. He was the seasoned flight instructor keeping hotshot pilots in line in Top Gun . He was the doomed captain of the Nostromo in “Alien. On television, as Sheriff Jimmy Brock on Picket Fences, he made small-town justice feel both tough and humane. That role brought him two Emmy nominations and a win for outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1993.

His range went well beyond badges and uniforms. In The Turning Point, he played Shirley MacLaine’s patient husband. In Steel Magnolias , he was Sally Field’s husband. In “Contact,” he turned calculating, playing an opportunist who undercuts Jodie Foster’s quest to reach life beyond Earth.…