October 23, 2026
We lost a big star of the big and small screen yesterday with the death of Tom Skerritt at the age of 93. Skerritt was one of those actors who has been in a ton of movies and I easily recognized his face, but I couldn’t have named him if my life had depended on it. I mentioned such to my wife Margaret while watching STEEL MAGNOLIAS a few years ago, and she rattled his name off in mere seconds. Okay, maybe I’m the only one who couldn’t name him on sight, but I saw the guy in a ton of movies. I think the first time I ever saw Skerritt was back in my teenybopper days when I snuck in a late-night viewing of the 1974 movie BIG BAD MAMA where Skerritt played a backwoods, machine gun firing gangster with Angie Dickinson, who is 95 by the way. Indeed, that was an inspiring movie for any teenage boy!
Skerritt was in over 60 movies ranging from M*A*S*H to TOP GUN to one of my favorites, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, where he played a concerned father, Presbyterian minister, and weekend fly fisherman. The guy certainly wasn’t typecast, and his acting flowed on to the TV screen as well. Skerritt worked up until just last year. You’ve got to love an actor who can work up into his 90’s! Even if I couldn’t name him. R.I.P. Tom Skerritt.
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