By Rowan Vale Fact-checked by Fiona Dalrymple Updated
CONFIRMED
Tom Skerritt, who played Captain Dallas in Ridley Scott’s Alien, has died at 93. His family announced that he died Wednesday, October 21, 2026, of natural causes, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety confirmed the news with his publicist. For horror fans, he was also part of Poltergeist III and The Dead Zone.
What we know
The Hollywood Reporter, reporting the family statement, says Skerritt died on Wednesday, October 21, at age 93, and that the cause was natural causes. Variety confirmed the death through Skerritt’s publicist, with the same day, age and cause.
CNN reports that the family statement was distributed by his publicist, Susan Madore. That statement also highlighted something many movie fans may not know: Skerritt co-founded the Red Badge Project, a program that helps veterans through writing. Fox News Digital, citing the family, reports that relatives called his loss heartbreaking.
His family confirmed the death to NBC News on Thursday, October 22. NBC News and ABC News report that he is survived by his wife Julie and five children.
The Alien connection is the one that matters most around here. The Hollywood Reporter says Skerritt originally turned down the role of Captain Dallas. He reconsidered after learning Ridley Scott had signed on to direct. That choice put him at the center of one of the most important horror films ever made.
His wider genre credits include Poltergeist III, which Rolling Stone lists among his supporting roles. Rolling Stone and NBC News also credit him in The Dead Zone.
The rest of his career was huge. NBC News and Variety report that he was born August 25, 1933, in Detroit, and served in the U.S. Air Force before acting. According to NBC News and The Hollywood Reporter, his breakthrough was Captain Duke Forrest in Robert Altman’s MAS*H (1970), and he later played Viper in Top Gun (1986). Variety notes his long run on Picket Fences, from 1992 to 1996.
What we don’t know yet
NBC News reports that the family plans to share memorial information later. We have no details on dates or format yet, and we won’t guess.
There are no conflicting reports about his death. Every outlet we checked agrees on the date, his age and the cause, which all come from the family’s statement.
What it means
Alien is the film that taught a generation what space horror could be: slow, industrial, claustrophobic and utterly merciless. Every great haunted-spaceship story since owes it something. Skerritt was a big part of why it worked. As Dallas, he gave the crew a grounded, believable center, and that made the terror around him land harder.
It’s a nice bit of film history that he almost wasn’t there. By The Hollywood Reporter’s account, Ridley Scott’s involvement is what changed his mind, so we have Scott to thank for one more piece of the puzzle falling into place.
Horror fans who know him only from Alien should also look up his later genre work. He turns up in Poltergeist III, the final chapter of that cursed and much-debated trilogy, and in The Dead Zone. Those are part of the same story: a working actor who kept wandering back into the genre.
The family’s statement is also a reminder that his life went well beyond the screen. Air Force service early on and, decades later, co-founding the Red Badge Project to help veterans tell their stories says a lot about who he was off camera.
Our thoughts go to his wife Julie, his five children and everyone who loved him. We’ll update this story when the family shares memorial plans. Tonight feels like a good night to dim the lights and put Alien back on.
Behind this article
- Fact-checked by Fiona Dalrymple before publication.
- Published · Updated
How we checked it
- Every claim is checked by Fiona Dalrymple; anything we cannot confirm is corrected, labelled or removed.