Off The Record
Tom Selleck Ditches His Trademark Mustache And Looks Unrecognizable
Everyone knows who Tom Selleck is. Despite his recent health scares, the 78-year-old actor shows no signs of retiring from a career spanning decades.
His role in the hit series Blue Bloods in the past few years has been well documented.
Selleck’s look has become instantly recognizable, and we’ve all grown accustomed to it.
Nevertheless, his trademark mustache is no longer there, and admirers are understandably startled by this.
Since he was a kid, Tom Selleck has been on the fence about his acting career.
He was born in Detroit, Michigan, on January 29, 1945, although he spent his childhood in the San Fernando Valley in California after his family relocated there.
Tom Selleck – early life
Unfortunately, Selleck’s family was unable to fulfill his lifelong ambition of attending USC.
He completed his high school education at Grant in 1962. He stayed with his parents after enrolling at Los Angeles Valley College so he could save money.
It appeared throughout Tom’s early years that he would pursue a career in sports rather than acting
Going pro was his desire, since he was a promising young basketball player. Considering this, it’s easy to fathom the joy he had upon receiving a basketball scholarship to USC.
“I never did school plays. I had no interest,” Tom told AARP in 2015.
It became clear to Selleck after a while that playing basketball professionally wasn’t in his destiny. But he was prepared for the worst and worked a part-time job to assist cover his college expenses.
Prior to her appearances on The Dating Game and other TV commercials, the ambitious student earned some positions.
A position on the talent program at 20th Century Fox was extended to Tom Selleck not long after. His talent crafting began, but he took a leave of absence for six months of active duty after two years.
Selleck was demoted upon his return. But he refused to give up, convinced that he would achieve stardom in the acting world.
He began appearing in guest spots on numerous shows in the early 1970s.
Selleck went on to star in six television pilots when he was in his mid-30s. But that was still not enough to bring about his major breakthrough.
Tom Selleck in ‘Magnum, P.I.’
That, says Tom, is why so many people took notice of his meteoric rise to fame after casting him as Thomas Magnum in Magnum, P.I.
Actually, he had fought and struggled quite hard.
“The luckiest thing that happened was that I didn’t get a real job until I was 35,” Selleck explained.
“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 but don’t graduate — because the audience won’t accept them as grown up.”
Magnum, P.I. peaked in popularity. During the run of the crime drama series from 1980 to 1988, Tom became an overnight sensation.
He finally won the Emmy in 1984 after five consecutive nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He was about to give up acting altogether if the program hadn’t come along.
Following his meteoric rise to fame on Magnum, P.I., Tom has enjoyed a career devoid of failure.
Films such as In & Out and Three Men and a Baby round out his resume. From Season 2 onwards, he brought in a whole new audience as Richard Burke, Monica Geller’s older boyfriend, on the smash sitcom Friends.
An exciting new chapter for Selleck began in 2010 when he was cast as Frank Reagan on the television series Blue Bloods. Thirteen seasons of the show have aired.
“I never thought I’d be lucky enough to do a show that had that long a run. Maybe Magnum, P.I. could have reached that number because nobody wanted to cancel it. I was the guy causing the divorce,” Selleck explained.
Tom Selleck says his back is “messed up”
“I’d done the number one movie [Three Men and a Baby] in the US and I wanted to have a family. The number of series that have done as many episodes as Blue Bloods is a tiny, tiny percentage. This is a validation that we’re all fighting the good fight. All the actors are very committed to the work. So, it’s a number that gives reward for the professionalism of this entire cast.”
Actors often work with stunt doubles in movies and TV shows. Even though it’s not always safe, some people just can’t bear to have anybody else carry out their pranks.
There has been a price to pay for Selleck’s history of doing most of his stunts on his own. He claims his physical condition has changed.
“My back’s kind of messed up,” Selleck shared.
“When you do stunts in movies—I do a lot of them—you’re taking a risk, but you’re also sitting around a lot. So you might do a fight scene, and then you sit in your chair, and it’s not like you have a personal trainer saying, “Okay, we’re ready to go, but Tom needs ten minutes of stretching and warm-up.”
“And I think the price,” he added, “I see it with peers, I talk to them sometimes. You just see the price of all those stunts. They weren’t that hard, but I think it’s the stop-and-go of all that stuff.”
Although he dislikes going to the gym, Selleck is making an effort to stay active by working at the family ranch in Ventura, California.
“I have a 63-acre ranch, and I do not all, but a lot of, the grunt work. Clearing brush, planting trees. We’ve got about a hundred ancient oaks I planted. I’ve probably planted a thousand trees myself.”
Tom Selleck – iconic mustache
Tom Selleck is extremely interested in horses outside of work, and he is also almost a writer.
The famous actor announced last year, in an interview with TV Insider that he is penning a book.
“I’m halfway done. It’s about my 50 years in show business. The tentative title is, Don’t Know Where I’m Going, But There’s No Use Being Late. I doubt if I’ll change it. That’s the story of an actor’s life. You finish your job, a show or a movie, and you’re unemployed. It’s fun. I hope the book is kind of funny because I don’t take myself that seriously. A sense of humor is almost essential for a long career as is a sense of humor in your work,” he said.
It was Tom Selleck’s mustache that first made him famous, thanks to Magnum P.I.
He was concerned that his career would take a major hit because of the facial hair, which has become synonymous with Selleck. Tom thought he would have to live with it indefinitely.
“After Magnum, I think I went, ‘Oh my gosh!’ I’m going to live with mustache questions for the rest of my life,” he once said.
“Most of the time I got hired they said the mustache is okay, but you gotta shave it off for the job. I was born without it and I’m prepared to work without it.”
Selleck, meanwhile, made light of the possibility that his beard was the sole deciding factor in landing the Blue Bloods gig.
“Well, it meant a job on Blue Bloods,” he said. “The director said maybe you can play this guy without a mustache. I said, ‘Sure, I was born that way.’”
Tom Selleck ditches signature mustache – almost unrecognizable
As previously stated, Selleck’s mustache has become instantly recognizable. However, after shaving it off, he no longer resembles himself.
Near his home, photographers caught the 78-year-old actor driving his silver pickup truck, breaking his public silence that had lasted for almost a year.
Tom Selleck has remained remarkably absent from public view for an extended period of time. Nevertheless, Page Six was able to obtain the images and publish them.
They showed him driving his pickup truck close to his house during an unusual public appearance at the end of September.
The removal of Selleck’s trademark mustache rendered him virtually unrecognizable. On the contrary, while he was out and about in the San Fernando Valley, he sported a full beard.
Tom has, needless to say, had an impressive career. His undying devotion to Jillie Mack, his wife, is another cause for celebration. Despite the transient nature of celebrity weddings, the couple has remained blissfully married for more than three decades.
The first time Selleck met Jillie Mack was at a musical performance of Cats, in which Mack was starring, as he recalled in an interview with Closer Weekly. It was in the 1980s, following the dissolution of Selleck’s marriage to Jacqueline Ray, which had lasted ten years.
Even though his future wife made the initial move, Selleck nevertheless approached her backstage, despite his claims that he isn’t as slick with the ladies as his on-screen rivals.
Tom Selleck – family
“She had to go on [stage]. I was hemming and hawing, and she finally asked, ‘Do you want to meet for a cocktail?’” Selleck recalled.
Evidently, the date was a success, as Selleck and Mack were wed in a small ceremony in 1987. Hannah was born to them a year after they tied the knot.
Selleck has sought to keep his private life out of the limelight in Hollywood ever since, prioritizing his family over notoriety.
To be more specific, he sacrificed time with his wife and cherished daughter for the sake of his acting career.
The reason Tom Selleck left Magnum was to start a family, he said to People in 2012.
“It took a long time to get off the train, but I try very hard to have balance, and this ranch has helped me do that.”
“We both thought it was the best environment for Hannah to grow up,” Jillie Mack added.
Tom, who loved spending time in nature, wanted nothing more than to instill this love of the outdoors in his daughter. He quickly transferred it to her!
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On the 65-acre Ventura ranch that Tom and Jillie owned, Hannah spent her formative years. Their shared love of horses led to a side business for the father and daughter in horse breeding.
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