After being under contract with Paramount and Universal, Tighe's career took a turn from bit parts and extra work when he was cast as Roy DeSoto on Emergency!

Following Emergency!, Tighe went on to make numerous guest appearances in television shows such as Ellery Queen, Cos, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, and The Six Million Dollar Man.

Aside from The Graduate, some of Tighe's film credits include Road House, City of Hope, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and Jade.

Tighe has also been seen in a number of stage productions, including A Reckoning,[2] Mourning Becomes Electra, Anna Christie, Other Desert Cities, and Curse of the Starving Class.

[3] Tighe was born on August 13, 1944,[4] as Jon Kevin Fishburn in Los Angeles, California, of Czech-Bohemian and Irish descent, the son of an actor.

[8] During this period Tighe worked with a number of well-known actors including Lorne Greene, Maggie Smith, and Michael Landon before signing a contract with Universal Studios.

[10] In order to better portray his character, Tighe, along with other actors on the show, sat in on paramedic classes and participated in "ride-alongs" with the LA County Fire Department.

"[13] The show ran six seasons (129 episodes) with seven two-hour television movie specials including a pilot film, The Wedsworth-Townsend Act and averaged 30 million viewers each week.

[13] Both Tighe and Mantooth appear in the video presentation The Pioneers of Paramedicine Story, a project done in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Fire Museum.

[19] Roy DeSoto's uniform, along with some of the medical equipment used on the show was inducted into the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in the Public Services division in May 2000.

[21] The honor was bestowed for contributions to the fire service and emergency medicine through educating and inspiring others to work in firefighting and EMS.

[21] After the cancellation of Emergency!, Tighe continued to work in episodic television, appearing on Ellery Queen, Cos, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Love Boat.

He also appeared on the CBS Library production of "Orphans, Waifs, and Wards" and as Thomas Jefferson in an adaptation of the John Jakes novel The Rebels in 1979.

[3] He worked in summer stock as part of a company directed by Alfred Christie at the Hampton Playhouse in 1980,[22] and performed in Come Blow Your Horn.

[24] Tighe made his Broadway debut at the Music Box Theatre in the play, Open Admissions;[25] the show closed after two weeks.

Tighe appeared on episodes of Murder, She Wrote, Tales from the Crypt, Under Suspicion, Chicago Hope, The Single Guy, ER, The Outer Limits.

Besides episodic work, Tighe appeared in a number of television movies during the 90s, including Perry Mason: The Case of the Defiant Daughter, the remake of Escape to Witch Mountain, and slain Kansas father and farmer Herb Clutter in the 1996 miniseries adaptation of Truman Capote's book In Cold Blood.

Tighe portrayed Ken Carver in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Brigadier General Nelson Miles Geronimo: An American Legend.

Tighe continued to work in theater and appeared in three different roles: Hilton Lasker, Swifty, and Lord Kitterson in The End of the Day: An Entertainment at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, in 1989 and 1990.

[2] Tighe played Matt in Anna Christie,[32] along with Sam Shepard's Buried Child, and Yuri Lubymov's production of Crime And Punishment [8] on The Arena Stage at the Kreeger Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Tighe played the role in both the New York and at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles productions, replacing Robin Williams,[3][39] He won positive reviews for his performance of the Tiger.

[41] In Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class, Tighe played Weston in 2013 at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven with Judith Ivey.