Thomas William Selleck (; born January 29, 1945) is an American actor. His breakout role was playing private investigator Thomas Magnum in the television series Magnum, P.I. (1980–1988), for which he received five Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, winning in 1984. From 2010 to 2024, he portrayed NYC Police Commissioner Frank Reagan in Blue Bloods. From 2005 to 2015, he portrayed Jesse Stone in nine television films based on the Robert B. Parker novels.
In films, Selleck played bachelor architect Peter Mitchell in Three Men and a Baby (1987) and its sequel Three Men and a Little Lady (1990). He has also appeared in more than 50 other film and television roles since Magnum, P.I., including the films Quigley Down Under, Mr. Baseball, and Lassiter. He appeared in recurring television roles as Monica Geller's love interest Dr. Richard Burke in Friends, as Lance White, the naive private investigator on The Rockford Files, and as casino owner A. J. Cooper on Las Vegas. He also had a lead role in the television Western film The Sacketts, based on two of Louis L'Amour's books.
Selleck was a spokesman for the National Rifle Association of America, an endorser in advertisements for National Review magazine, and co-founder of the Character Counts! organization. He also served as an infantryman in the California Army National Guard from 1967 to 1973, attaining the rank of sergeant.
Thomas William Selleck was born in Detroit, Michigan, on January 29, 1945, to housewife Martha Selleck (née Jagger) and Robert Dean Selleck, who was a real estate developer. He has an elder brother Robert, a younger sister Martha, and a younger brother Daniel.
Selleck is of mostly English descent, although he also has Irish and some German ancestry on his mother's side. Through a 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 of the 11th generation of his family born in North America.
Selleck's family moved to Los Angeles in 1948, and lived in Sherman Oaks. He graduated from Grant High School in 1962 with future Monkees singer and actor Micky Dolenz and enrolled at Los Angeles Valley College, living at home and saving money. Selleck, who stands 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) tall, transferred to the University of Southern California during his junior year to play for the USC Trojans men's basketball team. He also was a pitcher and designated hitter for the USC baseball team. He is a member of Sigma Chi fraternity and a member of the Trojan Knights. While he was majoring in business administration, a drama coach suggested Selleck 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 enlisted in the California Army National Guard. He served in Company C, 1st Battalion, 160th Infantry from 1967 to 1973, attaining the rank of sergeant.
Selleck's first television appearance was as a college senior on The Dating Game in 1965 and again on an episode that originally aired January 28, 1967, where he was in the first game and Bill Dana and Casey Kasem were in the second game. 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), Coma, and The Seven Minutes. He appeared in a number of TV series, miniseries, and TV movies. He was also the face of Salem cigarettes and Revlon's Chaz cologne. Selleck appeared in a 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 (1972). In 1972, he starred in the B-movie Daughters of Satan. He 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 Louis L'Amour's books adaptation The Sacketts, opposite Sam Elliott, Jeff Osterhage, and Western legends Glenn Ford and Ben Johnson, and that same year, Concrete Cowboys with Jerry Reed. The Shadow Riders, another L'Amour adaptation with Selleck opposite Elliott and Osterhage, followed in 1982. Quigley Down Under is one of his best-known Western films, but his 1997 role in Last Stand at Saber River resulted in his winning a "Western Heritage Award".
Selleck's big break came in 1980, 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 meant that the role went to actor Harrison Ford, instead. The shooting of the pilot for Magnum turned out to be 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 [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?
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. Navy SEAL officer who had served in the Vietnam War; after the war, Magnum had been in the "Naval Intelligence Agency" (a fictional version of the Office of Naval Intelligence) and then resigned from the Navy to become a private investigator living in Hawaii. The show continued until 1988, lasting eight seasons and 163 episodes, winning him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1984.
As Magnum, Selleck was famous for his mustache, a Hawaiian-style aloha shirt, a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, and driving an open-top Ferrari 308 GTS in the series.
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).
In 1984, he introduced Nancy Reagan at the 1984 Republican National Convention.
Selleck was offered the lead role of Mitch Buchannon in Baywatch, but he turned it down because he did not want to be seen as a sex symbol. The role eventually went to David Hasselhoff.
During the Magnum years, Selleck starred in several films including as a cat burglar in 1930s London in Lassiter and an acrophobic police detective in Runaway (both 1984), and as a stand-in father in Three Men and a Baby, which was the biggest hit at the American box office in 1987. In 1989, he ended the decade by starring in the romantic comedy Her Alibi and crime drama An Innocent Man.