The man who has it all…TOM SELLEK

CHEETAH HAYSOM

IF ONLY Tom Selleck would use the f-word, or spit or do something indiscreet, he would seem more human. But he doesn’t swear, he doesn’t spit and he’s never indiscreet – not off the set, at least.

We know Selleck has it all: the handsome features, fine build and clean-cut good nature that fans who have watched his “Magnum PI” television series adore. But in real life Selleck also has qualities that the eight-year TV action-drama could not convey. He has authority, wit, humour, humility and savvy – enough brains and business acumen to counteract suspicions that might be a bimbo. Hatchet writers for the tabloids have found Selleck so taint-free that they have resorted to invention – giving him the chance to prove he’s no pushover either. He sues them, with success. And then gives the money to good causes.

You even respect his integrity. Altough surrounded by swooning women, his eyes are only for his wife, Jillie Mack, the English dancer and actress. He dotes on two-year-old Hannah, their baby girl. Like a true modern father who is secure about his manhood, Tom Selleck shares the child-rearing chores, including changing diapers – “a little skill,” he says, his cover boy eyes twinkling, “I picked up on the set of ‘Three Men and a Baby’.”

Active

Selleck claims he does some housework, although he’s wise enough not to pretend he enjoys it. But when it comes to parenthood, he wants to be very active. He generously promotes his wife’s talents as an actress – adding that “if necessary, I’ll stay home with Hannah for a while so that Jillie can get back to work”. Some of the millions he made from playing Magnum and his subsequent film roles, he has ploughed back into real estate businesses he runs with his father and brothers. He is devoted to his family.

The Canadian woman who had interviewed Selleck in New York just before my turn arrived rolled her eyes toward heaven. “You won’t believe it,” she gasped, “but he’s just as gorgeous as they say.” In fact, in the flesh he’s better looking than photographs or television convey.
His tanned face is shorn of that Magnum moustache now that the series is long over. He would be too pretty if it weren’t for his new beard and the gentle crook in his nose.

His eyes are green and so gracefully curved that they look hopelessly sincere. His dark hair is thick, with a youthful sheen, and his mouth is wide, flanked by the biggest dimples in Hollywood.
Although he is lean, without a hint of the belly bulge that besets most men at 45, Selleck doesn’t look precious or preened. For a series of press interviews in a Manhattan hotel he wears a blue and brown check shirt under a serge jacket. His trousers are plain, and perfectly cut, brown tweed.

Lanky

“For most of my life, I was too tall for the roles they gave me. I was playing 5 ft 8 in parts from a 6 ft 4 in frame. My voice isn’t a 6 ft 4 in voice. I was once told that with my voice, I should give up acting.” He took no notice and went on to play roles better suited to his lanky frame.
He studied business at the University of Southern California on a baseball scholarship, and captained the university side. He keeps horses and rides like a cowboy – “which is why I always wanted to play one,” he says. Recently Selleck spent $5 million (about R13 million) on buying a secluded ranch near Santa Barbara. Isn’t vanity a natural hazard for a man of such physical perfection? Selleck laughs. “Some poll once listed me the sexiest man in the world, but that sort of thing hasn’t meant much to me. But I will admit, with a touch of humility, that when thy dropped me to sixth sexiest, I was a little disappointed.”

With a string of movies but only one sensational hit – “Three Men and a Baby” – Selleck has no delusions of professional grandeur. “I have worked hard. Between 1967 and 1980 I had to deal with endless failures and rejection. Things didn’t come easy before ‘Magnum’.”
He keeps perspective by recounting a story about an old couple who approached him in Hawaii at the height of his “Magnum” fame. “They came up to me with a camera and said ‘Please’, so I stopped and posed. But they said, ‘No!’ They wanted me to take their picture. They had no idea who I was.”

Although his films have seldom been critical raves, they have made millions of dollars worldwide. Selleck has one of the highest “bankability” quotients in the industry. Yet critics continue to ask when the actor will be a big star. Perhaps he is too personally popular, too genial, to be taken seriously? “That’s just image,” says Selleck. “I have a rough edge which people don’t see.” Selleck was not too soft to sustain gruelling production schedules for “Magnum PI”. And he’s ambitious enough to make three movies in 18 months: “An Innocent Man”, “Quigley Down Under” and “Three Men and a Little Lady”, the sequel to his previous hit.

Stunts

Simon Wincer, the director of “Quigley Down Under”, said that Selleck amazed even the toughest stuntmen by doing all his own stunt work while they were on location in Australia.
Selleck is no philosophical willow. When Jillie was having Hannah and they were asked their childbirth plans, Selleck pointed out there are many successful people on earth who were not born by the LeMaze method, with their dads present at the birth. “If we had to go with every new trend, we’d probably wear scuba gear, give birth under water and then bite the umbilical with our teeth,” he said. When the yellow press in America linked him with actress Victoria Principal, and said he was a “secret swinger”, Selleck – who seldom drinks, and never smokes – sued for $36 milion. “It took seven years and about a half a million dollars, but I was lucky enough to have the money to hang on.” He settled for a six-figure sum, which he used to create a chair in ethics in journalism at the University of Southern California.

Selleck cares about values – it’s why he loves old-style Westerns. “They are the American version of the classic moral dilemma between good and evil,” he says. “A country that loses its myths is in danger of losing its soul.”

In “Quigley Down Under”, Selleck plays an American cowboy who, when hired to kill dingoes in the Australian outback, find he’s really there to hunt aborigines. “There is a lot of Quigley in me,” says Selleck, who declines to make films with gratuitous violence or explicit sex.
Doesn’t he admit to a little sin, a hint of a flaw? Selleck looks perplexed. “I have a lot of flaws, but I can’t think of one right now. This is embarrassing,” he grins. “Please don’t write that I think I’m flawless. I just can’t think of any right now.”
Poor memory? I offer. “Thank you,” says Selleck, dimpling gratefully.