Tom Selleck may already have some pretty killer titles to his name, like Emmy award-winning action star, California Army National Guard veteran, and star of one of the longest-running TV series in history ("Blue Bloods"). But there's one more moniker he can add to his resume: avocado farmer.
The 79-year-old actor and his wife, Jillie Mack, bought their 65-acre ranch in Ventura County, California, way back in 1988. It's where he raised his two kids — Kevin Shepard, his adopted son from his first marriage to Jacqueline Ray, and Hannah Mack Selleck, his daughter with Mack — along with 1,500 native trees. He told PEOPLE in 2020 that he enjoys the simple life on the ranch.
"I'm a fairly private person," Selleck said. "I've always treasured the balance between work and time with my family. It's always about them. My relationships and my ranch keep me sane. I do grunt work, and I make the rounds. I like watching things grow. It's a retreat."
Before it was home to the Selleck family, the ranch was a working avocado farm built in the 1930s and owned by none other than "The King of Cool," Dean Martin. According to Architectural Digest, he sold the property to Fletcher Jones, a car dealer, in 1969 for $250,000 (the equivalent of around $2.1 million today). Selleck picked it up nearly a decade later for a cool $5 million.
The purchase of this home coincided with his final season of "Magnum, P.I.," the 1980s crime drama series that made him a household name. He quit the series the same year he bought the house to focus on a different aspect of his life.
"I quit Magnum to have a family," he told Closer Weekly in 2018. "It took me a long time to get off the train, but I try very hard to have balance, and this ranch has helped me do that."
His wife echoed his sentiments, telling the outlet that the ranch was "the best place to raise a child."
"It was such the wisdom of Tom," Mack said. "He knew he needed to buy back his anonymity, to replenish the soul."
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Sadly, the original listing is nowhere to be found on the internet. But AD reports that the actor's ranch is a Spanish-style colonial home with a whopping eight bedrooms and accommodations solely for the property's staff. In addition to the ridiculous amount of trees, you can also find horse stables, corrals, a tack room, a swimming pool, a cabana, a heliport, a tennis court, a three-hole putting course, and a practice green.
A.K.A., pretty much everything Selleck needs to never have to leave his house again.
The "Blue Bloods" actor told Closer Weekly that his home was a restored 1910 hunting lodge. Whether or not that's the main house or yet another dwelling on the property is unclear. The only thing we know for sure is that this entire ranch sounds like a total dream come true. And Selleck agrees.
"This ranch is a great counterpoint to the acting business, which is an abstraction," he said. "You do something, it's up on a piece of film, and everybody argues whether it's good or bad. You dig a hole and plant an oak tree, and I've probably planted a thousand of them, it's real. It's there, and you can watch it grow. It's a lot different from being famous.
"I work this ranch every day. I do the grunt jobs because it saves me money. And it's good for my head. You don't have time to reflect. You just keep moving. I feel very fortunate, and I feel I've earned it."
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But it's not been all rainbows and butterflies on the Selleck Ranch. Though he has a huge grove of avocado trees, there used to be a lot more. Outsider reported in 2021 that the property used to be an avocado farm until it was decimated by a drought. Thankfully, there are at least 1,500 trees that remain on the property that the actor tends to — even though he hates avocados.
"I don't eat 'em," Selleck said in 2010. "I almost threw up on the Letterman show. He surprised me, and he knew I didn't like them."
But he goes through great financial pains to keep them alive. In 2015, the actor was sued by his local water utility company for watering his ranch with allegedly stolen H2O that he wasn't technically allowed to use. All while California was under a drought, and local residents were asked to cut back on water usage.
Selleck settled the suit and paid over $21,000 to the district, which represented the amount they paid for a private investigator. It's not clear whether the actor actually knew the water he was paying a private company to deliver to his ranch was coming from a sketchy source, but we guess all's well that ends well when you're Magnum P.I.
