Tom Selleck

Born: 29th January 1945
Where: Detroit, Michigan

Tom Selleck has always looked the part of movie star but he's had a very sketchy career in that medium. TV would appear to be his most hospitable arena.

After achieving a reasonable level of success as a model in magazines, billboards and TV ads, Tom went on to appear in various soaps as well as the odd TV movie.

His feature film career started in 1970, when he played the "Stud" ogled by Mae West in the notorious Myra Breckenridge, but his films in that decade were not star-making material.

Tom appeared in eight failed pilots, usually playing men of action, before finding fame in 1980 with the often light-hearted detective series Magnum, P.I., for which he received both an Emmy and a Golden Globe award for best actor in a TV series.

He was then hired to star in George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark but the 'Magnum' studio would not release him from his commitments to the series.

With the notable exceptions of Three Men and a Baby and its 1990 sequel, most of Tom's big-screen outings have been commercial and critical disappointments.

Some reviewers cite Quigley Down Under as his best feature work. He played a rifleman - hired by a villainous Alan Rickman to shoot vermin at a Western Australian grazing station - who discovers he's expected to kill tribal Aborigines.

Having executive produced the last two seasons of 'Magnum', Tom went on to produce a number of TV-movies, including a series of eight films starring Burt Reynolds.

He made a highly touted return to TV as a recurring character on the hit sitcom Friends in 1996 and, the following year, he had one of his best big screen roles in the comedy In & Out with Kevin Klein.

Tom has one daughter, Hannah Margaret, with his second wife - actor, dancer Jilly Mack, whom he married on 7th August 1987.