Television|Tom Skerritt Has Died. He Was Viper in ‘Top Gun’ and the Captain in ‘Alien.’

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/22/arts/television/tom-skerritt-dead.html

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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.…