Tom Selleck’s Net Worth In 2024 Proves ‘Blue Bloods’ Makes Green
Tom Selleck’s net worth in 2024 comes largely from TV, and saying goodbye to Blue Bloods won’t be easy for him.
“I love the show,” Selleck gushed to Parade of the CBS hit series, which will end with Season 14. “Magnum I never tired of, but I got tired from it, though. I was in every shot. But this show, the only thing I’m tired of is the commute [to New York City]. I live in Los Angeles, that’s where my family is; my wife, my daughter. I will continue to commute.”
Selleck previously told Parade that while he’s not eager to leave Frank Reagan behind, he’s always going to keep working.
“I’m always looking out there for what’s next,” he said. “I can tell you this: I plan on staying an actor as long as I’m wanted.”
Find out how rich the television icon has become throughout his nearly five decades in front of the camera.
Selleck was born in Detroit in 1945, and he moved with his family to Sherman Oaks, California, a Los Angeles suburb, in 1948.
After graduating from high school, Selleck briefly enrolled in community college and lived at home. Thanks to his towering 6’4″ frame, he scouted for the University of Southern California basketball team, transferring to the school in his junior year to play on the USC Trojans, as well as to pitch for the university’s baseball team.
Selleck majored in business administration and tried acting in his senior year. He got bitten by the acting bug big time, dropping out of school shortly before earning his bachelor’s degree, to study acting with the legendary coach Milton Katselas (who himself trained under the iconic acting teacher Lee Strasberg).
While pursuing stardom, Selleck served in the California Army National Guard from 1967 to 1973. Concurrently, he began appearing in commercials for brands like Pepsi, Right Guard, Salem cigarettes, Close-Up toothpaste and Revlon men’s cologne. He also had bit parts in films and guest appearances on TV series during this time, most notably as investigator Lance White in The Rockford Files. Throughout his early career, Selleck starred in several TV pilots that were never picked up.
That finally changed in 1980, when he first starred as the titular Thomas Magnum in Magnum, P.I. Before the series started filming, he was famously offered to star as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but had to turn it down.
“You can’t do what ifs. There was a what if, but it’s a very long story,” he explained to Parade. “After turning down Indiana Jones, there was a what if, which was this: CBS, in a dispute with Universal who was producing Magnum, took Magnum off the fall schedule. Now if I couldn’t do Indiana Jones and Magnum went away, which was possible for about a month, that would have made it harder to be philosophical about it.”
He added, “I signed a contract for Magnum, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I blew most screen tests I ever did because I was too nervous. The screen test with Steven Spielberg, I already knew I had the Magnum commitment and I knew it might be a conflict, so I didn’t put the same pressure on myself.”
“Look, I’m not tired of hearing the story, but I’m sure Harrison Ford is,” he concluded. “He’s created this indelible character. There’s a lot of what ifs constantly. I think I did the right thing. I’ve heard stories where actors got a better offer and were committed to something and drove into a wall to injure themselves, so they didn’t have to do the lesser of the two commitments. Crazy stuff.”
It clearly all worked out really well, and Selleck won an Emmy for Magnum, P.I. in 1984.
