Tom Selleck

Thomas William Selleck was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1945 and raised in Southern California, where he played basketball at USC before drifting into acting by way of commercials and a long string of guest spots. After years of near-misses (including failed pilots that would make most actors quit), he landed the role of Thomas Magnum in Magnum, P.I. in 1980. The show ran eight seasons, earned him an Emmy in 1984, and installed a Hawaiian shirt, a red Ferrari, and one very specific mustache into the permanent memory of American television.

Selleck spent the next decades proving he was more than a Hawaiian-shirt punchline: Three Men and a Baby (1987) was the biggest box office hit of its year, Quigley Down Under (1990) let him play a proper Western hero, and a recurring turn as Monica's boyfriend Dr. Richard Burke on Friends introduced the mustache to a whole new generation. From 2005 to 2015 he anchored nine Jesse Stone TV movies, and from 2010 to 2024 he led the long-running CBS drama Blue Bloods as NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan.

Off-screen he is a famously private avocado rancher, a former member of the California Army National Guard, and the man who had to turn down Indiana Jones because of his Magnum contract. He has worn the mustache, with only brief interruptions, for roughly half a century.