Tom Skerritt may be best remembered for his roles in Alien, Steel Magnolias, and M*A*S*H*, but he’s one of those prolific actors with a resumé that spans decades. He was in westerns in the ‘60s, Harold and Maude in the ‘70s, and played Rebecca’s corporate boss Evan Drake in Cheers in the ‘80s. He’s a veteran of the New Hollywood movement, so he saw movies change from crowd-pleasers to art pieces to blockbusters.
In 1986, he played a key role in a rollicking sci-fi adventure movie with a performance that should have gone down in movie history, but unfortunately the movie was doomed by the one thing nobody can control: tragic coincidence.
