Thomas William "Tom" Selleck (born January 29, 1945) is an American actor and film producer known for starring as private investigator Thomas Magnum in the television series Magnum, P.I. (1980–1988) and Peter Mitchell in Three Men and a Baby and Three Men and a Little Lady. Before that, he had a recurring role as Lance White, the favorable and naive partner of Jim Rockford (played by James Garner) on The Rockford Files. He plays Police Chief Jesse Stone in a series of made-for-TV movies based on Robert B. Parker novels. Since 2010, he has been a primary cast member as NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan in the drama Blue Bloods on CBS.
Selleck has appeared in more than 50 film and television roles since Magnum, P.I., including Three Men and a Baby, Quigley Down Under, Mr. Baseball, and Lassiter. He appeared as Dr. Richard Burke on Friends and as A.J. Cooper on the TV series Las Vegas.
Selleck was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1945, to Martha Selleck (née Jagger), a housewife, and Robert Dean Selleck, who was an executive and real estate investor. Selleck is of mostly English ancestry, including recent immigrant ancestors. Tom Selleck's father was of primarily English ancestry but had distant German ancestry as well, while his mother was of English descent. Through an entirely paternal line Selleck is a direct descendant of English colonist David Selleck who moved to Massachusetts from Somerset, England in 1633. Through this line, Tom Selleck is the 11th generation of his family born in North America. Selleck's family moved to Sherman Oaks, California, during his childhood. He has an elder brother named Robert, a younger sister named Martha, and a younger brother named Daniel. Selleck graduated from Grant High School in 1962.