MY LIFE IN 10 Pictures
“Few of us are as good as we think we are; none of us are as good as we can be.” — Tom
GROWING UP in the suburbs of LA, Thomas William Selleck wanted to be a pro athlete. But, soon after landing a basketball scholarship at USC, he realized, “I was pretty good, but I wasn’t good enough.”
Fortunately, he’d make good with his side interest in acting — although he had to pay his dues for a long time with appearances on The Dating Game, commercials and the box-office bomb
Myra Breckinridge before becoming a star on Magnum, P.I. and a sex symbol. “Do I think I’m sexy? No, that’s someone else’s judgment, and I honestly don’t think you can try to be sexy and really succeed.” Besides, despite finding new audiences with his
Jesse Stone movies as well as his long-running series Blue Bloods,
Tom, who turned 75 on Jan. 29, would be the first to admit that he’d
measure his success by his role as husband and father of two. “I quit Magnum to have a family,” shared Tom. “I try hard to have
a balance. [But] my priority is time with my family.”
1 1974 SOAP DISH “It was pretty 1 tough getting to a level where I actually made a living in the business,” he confessed of doing small parts à la The Young and the Restless starting out. “It was pretty tough getting taken seriously. [In that era], a 6-foot-4 guy who looked like an old-fashioned leading man wasn’t getting any work. But I have a hunch it was tough for Dustin Hoffman [too].”
2 1980 MAGNUM OPUS “I hated it,” said Tom of his first impression of TV’s Magnum, P.I. But after fighting for the role to be less “James Bond–like” and more Jim Rockford, it made him a star. “The luckiest thing that happened was that I didn’t get a real job until I was 35. When I was 25, I looked 35 but sounded 15. There are a lot of very good actors who make it as younger leading men [and then] the audience won’t accept them as a grown-up.”
3 1983 TAKE THE HIGH ROAD While he’s “very fond” of his leading role in High Road to China, it didn’t quite make up for losing out on Indiana Jones a few years earlier due to his commitment to Magnum, P.I. “I did the right thing. I kept my word. I lived up to the contract. I think I have a hyperactive sense of responsibility. Some actors, that kind of thing might’ve killed them.”
4 1987 BABY STEPS “Three Men and a Baby changed my life,” confessed Tom. “At the time they were saying, ‘Can he graduate from TV to movies?’” He, however, had confidence. “The best thing about this business is if you accept who you are, and know who you are and don’t try to be who you were five years ago, you can always work.”
5 1990 UNDER A SPELL “It was a chance to be a kid again,” he said of playing cowboy in Quigley Down Under, in which he became enthralled with Australia. “It’s quite mystical to be there. I actually got a feeling many times that I might be stepping on a piece of land — because it’s so vast — that no other human being had ever walked on. I never got that feeling anywhere else.”
6 1996 RISKY BUSINESS His turn on Friends got him an Emmy nod, but friends advised him not to do it. “They said, ‘It’s a TV show! You can’t guest on someone else’s TV show. They’ll say you’re crawling back to television!’ I believe in taking risks. That’s what actors need to do — they have to risk failing. I’ve had a long career based on that philosophy.”
7 1997 KISS AND TELL “There’s always a scene when you do a movie, you go, ‘I know how to do the rest of the stuff, but that scene,’ ” Tom said of his kiss with Kevin Kline in In & Out. But the director had the perfect bit of advice. “[He said], ‘This is Cary Grant and Doris Day, and you’re Cary Grant,’ but I think he told Kevin the same thing.”
8 2005 STONE GROOVE “I read the book called Stone Cold and I said, ‘I’ve got to play this guy,’ ” Tom admitted of “damaged” police chief Jesse Stone, whom he’s taken on in nine TV movies. “I think he fits Raymond Chandler’s definition of a hero: ‘Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.’ ”
9 2010 MAN IN BLUE Tom has relished playing Police Commissioner Frank Reagan on TV’s Blue Bloods, if for no other reason than to highlight the importance of being a family man. “I play the patriarch, and it’s a rare opportunity to show a positive example. I don’t believe in playing characters that aren’t flawed. He’s got issues, but at the same time, most dads on TV are idiots.”
10 2018 LIKE-MINDED “There’s just not a lot of bulls---. We know we love each other, ” shared Tom about the secret to his 33-year marriage to wife Jillie Mack. “Hopefully, you marry someone who you not only love, but who you like as well. [And] I just still enjoy my wife’s company enormously.”