Tom Skerritt, Alien's Captain Dallas, dies at 93

Tom Skerritt dies: the supporting actor who held up half the film library

Tom Skerritt has died at the age of 93. The conversation that has sprung up around him these past few days confirms it: the actor almost nobody could name, yet who appeared in a handful of the most-watched films of the last five decades. Alien, Top Gun and Contact on the same résumé. No small antiestéticat for a man who was rarely the lead.

The role that gave him cult status was Captain Dallas in Ridley Scott's film. And there is a narrative anomaly worth pointing out: Dallas seems to be the protagonist for half the movie, until the script removes him in the vents of the Nostromo. As has been noted in the discussion, it was one of the first times a big-budget film did away with its apparent leader this way and left all the weight on a woman, Ripley. The rest is film history.

From M*A*S*H to Picket Fences: the invisible career

Before Alien he had already worked with Robert Altman on M*A*S*H (1970), where he played Duke Forrest, the Southern surgeon and Hawkeye's sidekick. Then came A River Runs Through It (1992), by Robert Redford, where he played Reverend Maclean, the father who teaches his sons to fly-fish; and Steel Magnolias (1989), as Drum, Sally Field's husband. For many, the reverend was his best work.

On television, Picket Fences (1992-96) earned him an Emmy for best actor in a drama for his sheriff Jimmy Brock. An award that did not change his status: he remained that actor you recognize without knowing his name. The eternal luxury supporting player.

The jarring fact: what Sandler makes in one movie

The conversation has also produced an uncomfortable contrast. According to a calculation circulating in the discussion, an actor with fifty years of career and an Emmy at home does not come close to what Adam Sandler makes on a single project. The film industry's pay gap is not about talent or craft, it is about box office and brand. Skerritt was one of those who hold the scene together so someone else can collect twice as much.

His affinity for the Democratic Party also came up, reason enough for some to decide not to mourn him. To each their own priorities.

The fake death that made a summer movie audience laugh

Among the most celebrated memories is The Shooter (Jaque al malo), a thriller with Christopher Lambert in which Skerritt fakes his own death when the psychopath slits his throat. The scene triggered such a fit of laughter in a summer cinema that it nearly ended in someone choking. Not everything has to be solemn tributes.

What remain are the glasses from Contact, some broken lens replaced with degraded blue ones. And the certainty that Captain Dallas will keep giving orders on the Nostromo long after we have forgotten most of the leads.

Given all this, Skerritt will probably be remembered more for a supporting role than for any of his leads. Though you never know: time puts everyone in their place, and sometimes the place is the one nobody expected.