Tom Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor who embodied a solid, wry authority figure, whether as a flight instructor in  Top Gun,  a tough-but-fair sheriff on TV's  Picket Fences  or the doomed captain of  Alien,  has died. He was 93.

Skerritt died Wednesday of natural causes, his family said in a statement.  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. He cared deeply about imagination, creativity, storytelling, service, veterans, the natural world and helping others find and share their own voices,  the statement said.

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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. 

Skerritt's early life

Skerritt grew up in a middle-class Detroit family, his father a small businessman and his mother a housewife. He had two brothers; a sister died as a child.

He spent four years in the Air Force, attended Wayne State University and then switched to the University of California, Los Angeles, to study filmmaking, inspired by a viewing of  Citizen Kane. 

His performance in a Los Angeles theater production of  The Rainmaker  led to his first film role - a supporting role a
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