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Tom Skerritt
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Tom Skerritt | |
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 Tom Skerritt at the 47th Emmy Awards |
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| Birth name | Thomas Roy Skerritt |
| Born | August 25, 1933  Detroit, Michigan, U.S. |
| Other name(s) | Skerrit |
Thomas Roy Skerritt (born August 25, 1933) is an Emmy Award-Winning American actor who has appeared in over 40 films and more than 200 television episodes (half Picket Fences).
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Skerritt made his television debut in 1962 in Combat! and his film debut in War Hunt, produced by Terry Sanders and released the same year. Skerritt's notable film appearances include M*A*S*H (1970; his huge role was pared down enormously by director Robert Altman), Harold and Maude (credited as "M. Borman") (1971), Cheech & Chong's Up in Smoke (1978), as Captain A.J. Dallas of the commercial towing vessel 'Nostromo' in Alien (1979), as an astronaut in Contact (1997), and in Top Gun (1986), where he played opposite Tom Cruise as Cmdr. Mike "Viper" Metcalf.
He was the Rev. MacLean in A River Runs Through It (1992). He was in the movie Poison Ivy (1992) with Drew Barrymore and also played a sheriff in The Dead Zone, a movie based on a Stephen King novel. He appeared as Evan Drake in the television sitcom Cheers, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and starred in the television series Picket Fences (1992–1996). More recently, Skerritt has starred in Homeland Security and The Grid which is a Fox/BBC co-production. Both of these latter projects dealt with counter-terrorism.
He also portrays the deceased William Walker on Brothers & Sisters, having appeared in the pilot as well as in several flashbacks since. This is his second time playing the husband of Sally Field, the first being his role in the film Steel Magnolias. Recently, he has played the role of Ezekiel on ABC Family's Fallen miniseries. He appears as the guide on the showcase website for Microsoft's new operating system called Windows Vista.
Skerritt was born in Detroit, Michigan to Helen, a homemaker, and Roy Skerritt, who worked in business.[1][2] A 1951 graduate of Detroit's Mackenzie High School, Skerritt attended Wayne State University and the University of California at Los Angeles. Since 1988, he has divided his domestic life between his Lake Washington home in suburban Seattle, Washington and a home on Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands. Skerritt has four grown children, consisting of three sons and a daughter.