Tom Skerritt died of natural causes on Wednesday, October 21, in Seattle, and he was 93. His family shared the news the next day with a statement that read, “We are heartbroken by his loss.” They added that while the world knew him through his acting career, “we knew him for his humor, curiosity, wisdom, generosity, and the love he brought into our lives.” DYR covered the details of Tom Skerritt’s death and his long career on Thursday, from M*A*S*H to Top Gun.
Within hours, the people who had shared a set with him began to post, and they talked about the man rather than Viper or Captain Dallas. The most moving words came from the actress who played his wife for four seasons on Picket Fences, and she saved her goodbye for a few lines that sound like they came straight from the heart.
Who Was The First Famous Face To Say Goodbye?
Julia Roberts was among the first. On Thursday she posted a photo of the two of them in a scene from Steel Magnolias, the 1989 film in which Skerritt played her father, Drum Eatenton, the father of the bride. Her caption was short. “A shining light of a gentle man,” she wrote, according to People, and she added “RIP” and a broken heart.
That film earned Roberts her first Oscar nomination, and Skerritt, as Sally Field’s husband, was the steady, wisecracking center of a household full of strong Southern women.
Roberts made one movie with him. The cast that knew him best spent four years with him in a small Wisconsin town that existed only on CBS, and they had a lot more to say.
Why Did The ‘Picket Fences’ Cast Call Him Their Leader?
Picket Fences ran on CBS from 1992 to 1996, and creator David E. Kelley set it in Rome, Wisconsin, where Skerritt’s Sheriff Jimmy Brock tried to keep order in a town full of strange cases and stranger neighbors. The role won him the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1993. Lauren Holly played his deputy, Maxine Stewart, and the two worked together again years later in the 2014 Civil War film Field of Lost Shoes.
“I adored Tom Skerritt,” Holly wrote on Instagram. “I was lucky enough to work with him on more than one project, but the first was Picket Fences. He was our leader. His example made those years such a joy and we all loved and respected him so much.” She remembered a man who “cared deeply for his family, both the one at home and the one at work,” and who cared about the planet and all of its inhabitants, too. Then she shared the memory that may say the most about life on that set. “So many memories I have of him include sharing fits of crippling laughter,” she wrote. “Rest easy my friend. I will think of you often.”
Justin Shenkarow, who grew up on the show as the Brocks’ son Matthew, posted a clip from the series with the words “Rest easy Tom.” The word “family” kept coming up, and it matched how Skerritt lived.
How Did Tom Skerritt See Himself?
Skerritt never pretended to be a movie idol, even when he looked like one. He liked to repeat a description a writer once gave him. “A writer once described me as a character actor locked in a leading man’s body, and I’ve always loved that,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1997, as CBS News recalled this week.
He kept working into his 90s. In 2021 he played a dying retired surgeon in East of the Mountains, and he was candid about how close the story felt. “I’ve been close to it myself,” he told Scott Simon on NPR, adding that he had to “come to grips with myself, as everyone does when you get to a certain age in your life.” His final film role came in the 2025 Western Broke, and as recently as March he was still signing autographs and telling stories at a fan event, when DYR wrote about how the Top Gun star still commanded the spotlight at 92.
His family said he helped found TheFilmSchool there to support new filmmakers, and he co-founded the Red Badge Project, which helps veterans living with PTSD by having them write and share their stories. “Tom believed deeply in the power of storytelling,” the family said, according to ABC7. He is survived by his wife, Julie Tokashiki, his children Andy, Erin, Matt, Collin and Emiko, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
That was the family at home. The family at work had one more voice to be heard from, and it belonged to the woman who shared his Emmy year.
What Did Kathy Baker Say About Her TV Husband?
Kathy Baker played Dr. Jill Brock, the town doctor who was married to Sheriff Jimmy, and she and Skerritt gave Picket Fences its heart. Baker won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for the role in 1993, the same year Skerritt won his, and she went on to win twice more, in 1995 and 1996.
Her statement to People was the one that stopped readers. “My heart is broken to hear of the passing of dear, lovely, loving, Tom, my TV husband, my partner, my darling friend,” Baker said. “He taught me so much during our four years on Picket Fences. I couldn’t have asked for a more gracious and kind actor to work with, and it was very special to share with him the incredible run of the show.”
Thirty years after Rome, Wisconsin went dark, she still called him her partner. If you spent the 1990s watching the Brocks on CBS, that is exactly how you remember them, sitting across the kitchen table from each other and working it out.