TOM SELLECK
AS HE PREPARES TO WRITE HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, THE TV ICON OPENS UP TO CLOSER ABOUT LIFE, LOVE AND LOYALTY
As he prepares to pen his autobiography, the actor opens up to Closer about his career and his family.
At a recent Q&A with the cast of Blue Bloods in NYC, an audience member asked Tom Selleck to compare his most famous role to his current one: “Is there one characteristic Magnum, P.I. has in common with Frank Reagan?” “The mustache!” another fan joked. “I hear that once a day,” Tom quipped, before turning serious. “I think it’s loyalty. This character has it. Magnum had it. That’s the common denominator.”
Loyalty has also been a recurring theme for Tom, both on- and offscreen, and he’ll soon look back on his life in a new way, as he revealed exclusively to Closer backstage at the event. “I’m writing my autobiography,” he said. “People have been asking me for years, and I’m finally going to do it. We’re talking to publishers now.”
He’ll be able to draw on a wealth of material. Born 73 years ago in Detroit (“hence the Tigers cap on Magnum,” he says), Tom was raised as the second of four children by his carpenter-turned-real-estateinvestor father, Robert, and homemaker mother, Martha. “I got my values from my parents,” he says. “They were good people and good role models. That’s the basis for whoever I’ve turned out to be.”
Legend has it Tom’s dad challenged his kids that if they could make it to 21 without drinking, smoking or swearing, they’d earn a gold Rolex watch — and they all did. “He was a great example,” Tom says. Robert died in 2001, and Martha passed away last year at 96. “She’s always been there, and she’s always been fair,” Tom said at his Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in 1986. “And she made great cherry pie.”
IN AND OUT
Tom’s parents supported him as he struggled in showbiz after attending USC on a basketball scholarship, working as a model and serving in the National Guard from 1967 to 1973. “I’m a veteran, and I’m proud of it,” Tom says. “We’re all brothers and sisters.”
Small roles on TV (he played two
“My first priority is time with my family. I’m always a dad, no matter how old my kids get. ”
— Tom
different cops on Marcus Welby, M.D. and a doctor on Charlie’s Angels) and in movies (“Stud” in Mae West’s 1970 flop Myra Breckinridge) and six failed pilots led to a recurring role as cocky P.I. Lance White on The Rockford Files, where Tom met his mentor, James Garner. The TV veteran urged Tom to voice his concerns about Magnum, P.I.’s pilot script, which portrayed him as a smooth, 007 type. “Jim was pivotal to my future in show business,” says Tom, who turned Magnum into a more human, relatable character. The show was an instant hit, and “being 35, I didn’t take success for granted,” says Tom.
The drama’s grueling schedule took a toll on Tom professionally and personally, however. He turned down the role of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark because he didn’t want to break his TV contract, heeding his father’s lesson, “A man is only as good as his word.” Tom’s focus on work also put a strain on his first marriage, to actress Jacqueline Ray, and they divorced after 11 years in 1982. “It’s important to nurture your mar- riage,” Tom says. “I worked 90 hours a week on Magnum and did a movie on every break. It took me a long time to get off that train, but now I try very hard to have a balance.”
Magnum ran for 158 episodes and ended only because “I wasn’t tired of it, I was tired from it,” Tom says. “I was in every shot, and it was a lot of work, but it served its place in history — it’s in the Smithsonian as the first positive portrayal of Vietnam veterans.”
Tom wanted to leave a different kind of legacy, though. “I knew if I wanted a family, it was time to move on,” he says. “As good as this business has been to me, life is about more important things.”
“I wouldn’t be where I am today without my family’s support.”
— Tom
BLOOD TIES
While Tom was in London shooting the 1984 film Lassiter, he went to see Cats and was bewitched by one of its stars, actress Jillie Mack. He asked her out to dinner, and the couple wed three years later in a private ceremony at the “Dream Maker” chapel in Nevada. “They were both nervous,” the officiant later said.
“He was very concerned that the service be heartfelt and meaningful.”
It was, and in 1988 they welcomed a daughter, Hannah. She was reared on a ranch outside Hollywood, in Ventura County, Calif. “We both thought it was the best environment for her to grow up,” Tom says. “They tried to raise me as normally as possible,” says Hannah, who became an equestrian and runs a stable with her folks. “They wanted me to find my love and pursue it.”
The bond between Tom and Jillie, 60, has only grown deeper. “We really like each other,” says Tom. “We love each other, but like is a really important part of it. Jillie has a joie de vivre. She doesn’t do anything halfway. She embraces things — the smallest moment, she’ll put a frame around it. I don’t know what the secret is. The secret is her, I guess.”
After successful stints in film (Three Men and a Baby, In & Out), TV movies (the Jesse Stone mysteries) and as a guest star (he earned an Emmy nod as Courteney Cox’s beau on Friends), Tom signed on to co-star as an NYPD family’s patriarch in Blue Bloods. The CBS drama is in its eighth season, having recently passed Magnum’s 158-episode mark, and shows no signs of slowing down. “Nobody gets two shots like this,” says Tom. “I’m very fortunate.”
His co-workers feel equally lucky to have Tom around. “He’s such an influence and mentor in my life and career,” Sami Gayle, who plays his granddaughter, tells Closer. “He’s omniscient in my eyes. Seventy-five percent of everything he says, you could put on a plaque.” Demurs Tom, “I ain’t gonna offer advice unless somebody asks me. I’m a stealth mentor.”
Whether he likes it or not, Tom has become a legend in show business for his professionalism and personal integrity. “I don’t like to be called iconic — I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” he growls. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad or the end of the line.”
If his millions of fans have anything to say about it, Tom’s career won’t be coming to the end of the line anytime soon. Nor does he want it to, as long as he keeps getting scripts as good as Blue Bloods’. “I don’t have a bucket list — everybody says, ‘What do you want to do next?’ I don’t know,” he concludes. “My job is to read somebody else’s work and see if I fit in. The real key is, does it scare me? If it does, that’s probably what I should do.” Sounds like the kind of hard-won wisdom that could make for a good book.