Tom Selleck. Wikipedia.

Thomas William Selleck (/ˈsɛlɪk/; born January 29, 1945 is an American actor, film producer, and California Army National Guard veteran. He is most known for starring as private investigator Thomas Magnum in the television series Magnum, P.I. (1980–1988), as Peter Mitchell in Three Men and a Baby, and as NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan in Blue Bloods on CBS since 2010.

Selleck also had a recurring role as Lance White, the likeable and naive partner of Jim Rockford (played by James Garner) on The Rockford Files and also played Police Chief Jesse Stone in a series of made-for-TV movies based on Robert B. Parker novels. Selleck has appeared in more than 50 film and television roles since Magnum, P.I., including Three Men and a Baby, Quigley Down Under, Mr. Baseball, and Lassiter. He appeared as Dr. Richard Burke on Friends and as A.J. Cooper on the TV series Las Vegas. He also had a lead role in the television western movie The Sacketts, based on two of Louis L’Amour‘s books.

Selleck was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1945, to housewife Martha Selleck (née Jagger)  (1921–2017) and Robert Dean Selleck (1921–2001), who was an executive and real estate investor. His father was of primarily English ancestry but had distant Serbianancestry as well, while his mother was of English descent.  Through an entirely paternal line Selleck is a direct descendant of English colonist David Selleck who moved to Massachusetts from Somerset, England, in 1633. Through this line, Selleck is the 11th generation of his family born in North America.

Selleck’s family moved to Sherman Oaks, California, during his childhood. He has an elder brother Robert, a sister Martha, and a younger brother Daniel.

Selleck graduated from Grant High School in 1962  and enrolled at Los Angeles Valley College living at home and saving money. During his junior year, with the help of a basketball scholarship, Selleck transferred to the University of Southern California where he played for the USC Trojans men’s basketball team. He is a member of Sigma Chi fraternity and a member of the Trojan Knights. While Selleck was majoring in Business Administration, a drama coach suggested he try acting and, in his senior year, he dropped out of the university. Selleck then studied acting at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, under Milton Katselas.

Upon receiving a draft notice during the Vietnam War, Selleck joined the California National Guard. He served in the 160th Infantry Regiment of the California Army National Guard  from 1967 to 1973.

Selleck’s first television appearance was as a college senior on The Dating Game in 1965, and again in 1967. Soon after, he appeared in commercials for products such as Pepsi-Cola.

He began his career with bit parts in smaller movies, including Myra Breckinridge (invited on the set by Mae West^[17]), Coma, and The Seven Minutes. He appeared in a number of TV series, mini-series and TV movies. He was also the face of Salem cigarettes and Revlon‘s Chaz cologne. Selleck appeared in the commercial for Right Guard deodorant in 1971, with Farrah Fawcett in 1972 for the aperitif Dubonnet, and another in 1977 for the toothpaste Close-Up. He was also in a Safeguard deodorant soap commercial (date not available). In 1972, he starred in the B-movie Daughters of Satan. Still struggling as an unfamiliar TV actor, Selleck had a recurring role in the 1970s as private investigator Lance White in The Rockford Files.

Selleck is an avid outdoorsman, marksman and firearms collector. These interests led him to leading-man cowboy roles in Western films, starting with his role as cowboy and frontier marshal Orrin Sackett in the 1979 film The Sacketts, opposite Sam Elliott, Jeff Osterhage, and Western legends Glenn Ford and Ben Johnson. He followed The Sacketts with The Shadow Riders in 1982, then portraying a cat burglar in 1930s London in Lassiter in 1984. Quigley Down Under is probably one of his best-known Western films, although he won a “Western Heritage Award” for his 1997 role in Last Stand at Saber River. In 1979 he starred in Concrete Cowboys with Jerry Reed.

Selleck meeting Diana, Princess of Wales at the White House in November 1985. First LadyNancy Reagan stands immediately between them, with Charles, Prince of Wales and PresidentRonald Reagan behind her. Diana is wearing the Travolta dress.

Selleck was an accessible actor, but spent years receiving little interest from the entertainment industry. His big break came when he was cast in the lead role as Thomas Magnum in Magnum, P.I.. The producers would not release the actor for other projects, so Selleck had to pass on the role of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which then went to Star Wars alumnus Harrison Ford. It turned out that the shooting of the pilot for Magnum was delayed for over six months by a writers’ strike, which would have enabled him to complete Raiders.

“

Look, I made a deal with Magnum and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m proud that I lived up to my contract, and some people said, ‘You’ve got to get into a car and drive into a brick wall and get injured and get out of Magnum and do this [Raiders].’ I said ‘I gotta look my mom and dad in the eye, and we don’t do that,’ so I did Magnum…that’s not so bad is it? —Tom Selleck • Build Series Interview

”

Selleck played the role of Thomas Magnum in 1980 after filming six other TV pilots that were never sold. Magnum was a former U.S. NavyOfficer, a veteran of a Special Operations unit, “SEAL” in the Vietnam War, and later a member of the “Naval Intelligence Agency” (a fictional version of the Office of Naval Intelligence), who had resigned his commission with the Navy to become a private investigator living in Hawaii. The show would go on for eight seasons and 163 episodes until 1988, winning him an Emmy Award^[20] for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1984.

Selleck was famous for his mustache, a Hawaiian-style aloha shirt, a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, and a Colt MKIV/Series 70 Government Model handgun (a commercial version of the U.S. Military M1911A1) which his character regularly carried. The actual prop from the show was a 9×19mm Parabellum, serial number 70L33101, used for its reliable functioning with readily available blanks; although the original gun was a traditional .45 ACP 1911. Magnum also used a Star Model B, another 9mm similar to the M1911A1, and a Detonics Pocket 9 during the series.

Magnum drove a Ferrari 308 GTS in the series. The model became so identified with the role that Ferrari fans now refer to the red-painted model as a “Magnum” Ferrari.

After the end of the show in 1988, it established itself as the top-rated one-hour show in the history of syndicated reruns (at least until 1998). Selleck confirmed that he was the most popular choice by fans to play the role of Magnum in the once-rumored Magnum, P.I. movie.  In 1984, he introduced Nancy Reagan at the 1984 Republican National Convention. Selleck was offered the lead role of Mitch Buchannon in Baywatch, but turned down the role because he did not want to be seen as a sex symbol. The role eventually went to David Hasselhoff.

During the Magnum years, he also starred as an acrophobic police detective in Runaway and a stand-in father in Three Men and a Baby.