Actor Tom Skerritt, best known for roles in Top Gun and Alien, has died at the age of 93.
He died of natural causes, his family said in a statement.
"While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career, we knew him for his humour, 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.
Known for his rugged good looks and ability to shine in a variety of genres, Skerritt's Hollywood career spanned from the 1960s to the 2020s.
He won an Emmy in 1993 for outstanding lead actor in a television drama series for his role in Picket Fences.
Other career highlights included playing the patient husband of Shirley MacLaine in Turning Point, Sally Field's husband in Steel Magnolias and a scheming opportunist in the extraterrestrial movie 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.
Born on August 25, 1933, Skerritt grew up in a middle-class Detroit family.
He was a father of five children and was married three times.
His father was a small businessman and his mother a housewife. He had two brothers; a sister died as a child.
Skerritt 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 watching Citizen Kane.
He made his film debut in 1962 alongside a young Robert Redford in War Hunt.
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Skerritt's breakthrough role saw him play a roguish US army surgeon in director Robert Altman's 1970 Korean War black comedy M*A*S*H, a film with an ensemble cast that included Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould and Sally Kellerman.
The film, whose popularity coincided with American unease over the Vietnam War, was nominated for five Academy Awards.
In Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror Alien, Skerritt played Dallas, the captain of an ill-fated spacecraft, whose character is seated next to castmate John Hurt when a baby alien violently exits the torso of Hurt's character.
Alien, also starring Sigourney Weaver and Ian Holm, gained two Oscar nominations.
It was one of several films in which Skerritt appeared that featured strong female characters, in this case Weaver's heroic character Ripley, considered pioneering at the time.
"When I read the script, one of the things that I liked most about it was that the woman becomes the hero. I loved that," Skerritt said.
Tony Scott, the brother of the Alien director, cast Skerritt in a key supporting role playing Viper Metcalf in the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun.
Skerritt also starred alongside emerging star Brad Pitt in Robert Redford's 1992 period drama A River Runs Through It.
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