Tom Skerritt Biography, Age, Height, Wife

Tom Skerritt Biography (Age, Height, Weight, Wife, Family, Career & More)

American actor Thomas Roy Skerritt (born August 25, 1933) has starred in more than 200 television episodes and over 40 motion pictures since 1962. He is well-known for his work in the television shows Picket Fences and Cheers as well as the films M*A*S*H, Alien, The Dead Zone, Top Gun, A River Runs Through It, Poltergeist III, and Up in Smoke. In 1993, Skerritt won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Picket Fences, one of many nominations and accolades he has received.

Personal Details

Physical Appearance

Personal Life (Family, Friends, Girlfriends, Children)

Early life, Family, and Relationship

Skerritt was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of businessman Roy Skerritt and housewife Helen Skerritt. The youngest of three kids, he is. Skerritt, a 1951 alumnus of Mackenzie High School in Detroit, also studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Wayne State University.

Skerritt joined the US Air Force as a classification specialist shortly after finishing high school and completed a four-year tour of service. He served most of his time at Bergstrom Field in Austin, Texas.

Read Also

• Top 50 Hallmark Actress List
• Top 50 Hallmark Movie Actors List

Career, Struggle, Turning Point, and Success

In 1962, Terry Sanders’ War Hunt, which he produced, saw Skerritt make his acting debut. M*A*S*H (1970), Harold and Maude (credited as “M. Borman”), Fuzz, Big Bad Mama, Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke (1978), Ice Castles (1978), Captain Dallas in Alien (1979), would-be astronaut in Contact (1997) and SpaceCamp (1986), and Commander Mike “Viper” Metcalf in Top Gun (1986) are just a few of Skerritt’s well-known film roles.

He appeared in Poltergeist III in 1988 with Nancy Allen and Lara Flynn Boyle. He portrayed Thomas Drummond “Drum” Eatenton in Steel Magnolias in 1989. Skerritt starred as the fly-fishing-obsessed clergyman and father of the two main brothers in the highly acclaimed Robert Redford film A River Runs Through It in 1992.

Ray Walston’s television series My Favorite Martian featured Skerritt in the 1963 episode Walston would later continue to be a routine member of the cast in Skerritt’s show Picket Fences 30 years later. In the episode “Aunt Win Steps In,” he also appeared as a postal carrier in the 1963 television show The Real McCoys.

He was cast as Patrick Hogan, a teenage gambler who meets a horrible end after winning a modest sum in a bar, in Death Valley Days in 1965 and in the 1964 television series Bonanza. He portrayed a young Roy Bean in “A Sense of Justice,” a 1966 Death Valley Days episode, alongside Tris Coffin’s portrayal of Joshua Bean, Roy’s elder brother.

In a subsequent Death Valley Days episode from 1968 called “Ten Day Millionaires,” Skerritt portrayed Mark Twain with Dabney Coleman as Twain’s mining partner Calvin H. Higby. The two lose a lot of money, but Twain discovers that his destiny is written down. In the 1972 episode of Cannon titled “Nobody Beats the House,” Skerritt played a teenage gambler in a cameo appearance. He appeared as a corrupt sheriff in a 1975 cameo appearance on Cannon in the episode “The Conspirators.”

Skerritt made five episodes of the ABC shows Twelve O’Clock High (1964–1967), Gunsmoke (1965–1972), and as Evan Drake on Cheers. Later, he played Sheriff Jimmy Brock in CBS’s Picket Fences (1992–1996), for which he received an Emmy Award. He has appeared in The Grid and Homeland Security more recently.

Skerritt featured in the pilot episode and many flashback sequences for Brothers & Sisters, where he played the dead William Walker. He had previously portrayed Sally Field’s spouse in Steel Magnolias. This was his second time doing so. Alongside Paul Wesley, he portrayed Ezekiel in the ABC Family drama Fallen.

On the Windows Vista operating system showcase page, he served as the guide as well. He provided the voice for Clay Allison in the 2005 video game Gun. Later, he appeared as Nate Ford’s father in Leverage’s third and fourth seasons as a guest appearance.

Skerritt performed the title role in the Don Quixote staging by Pacific Northwest Ballet in February 2012. Lauren Holly, his former co-star from the movie Picket Fences, and Skerritt reconnected in 2014 for the film Field of Lost Shoes. In Lucky, which served as Harry Dean Stanton’s last motion picture, they were reunited as their Alien co-stars (2017). Skerritt is the founder and chairman of Heyou Media, a digital media business located in Seattle.

Tom Skerritt Biography (Age, Height, Weight, Wife, Family, Career & More)