‘Top Gun,’ ‘Alien’ star Tom Skerritt dies at 93

(Gray News) - Emmy Award-winning actor Tom Skerritt, known for his roles in “Alien,” “Top Gun,” “M*A*S*H,” and more, died Wednesday. He was 93.

He died of natural causes, according to The Associated Press.

“While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career, we knew him for his humor, curiosity, wisdom, generosity, and the love he brought into our lives,” his family wrote in a statement issued to media outlets, including People.

Skerritt was born in 1933 in Detroit.

After enlisting in the U.S. Air Force for four years, he attended Henry Ford College, Wayne State University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He left school to pursue acting.

Skerritt was twice nominated for an Emmy — both for “Picket Fences,” winning outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1993. Other career highlights include playing the patient husband of Shirley MacLaine in “Turning Point,” Sally Field’s husband in “Steel Magnolias,” and a scheming opportunist who stands in the way of Jodie Foster’s attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life in “Contact.”

“A writer once described me as a character actor locked in a leading man’s body, and I’ve always loved that. It’s a nice compliment. I’ve been able to walk the line between television and features,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1997.

Onstage, he was the narrator in “Our Town” at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre in 2004 and made his Broadway debut in 2013 in an adaptation of John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill,” in which The Associated Press wrote he “nicely pulls off a charming disgraced and drunken lawyer.”

Funeral plans were not immediately available.