Tom Selleck has always been a bit of a Hollywood enigma, thanks in part to his preference for living as far away from the spotlight as possible, but he has managed to stay a fixture in TV cr1me dramas for more than four decades.
Selleck attributes his long career to striking a balance between work (he currently stars on Blue Bloods, which is filmed in New York City) and home—a 65-acre ranch in Ventura, California, where he and his wife, Jillie, have raised their family since 1988.
“I’m a fairly private person,” the actor admitted, adding that “my relationships and my ranch keep me sane.” The ranch was once a working avocado farm, and it still has over 1,500 native trees that Selleck looks after himself. “I do grunt work and go around,” he explained to the magazine. “I enjoy seeing things grow. It’s a vacation.”
The property, which was built in the 1930s, has quite the pedigree—Dean Martin previously owned it before selling it to car dealer Fletcher Jones in 1969 for around $250,000. According to The Los Angeles Times, Selleck paid slightly more than $5 million for the property when he bought it in 1988.
The ranch house has eight bedrooms plus staff quarters, as well as stables, corrals, a tack room, a heliport, a swimming pool, an adjacent cabana, a tennis court, a three-hole putting course, and a practice green.
The ranch, according to the actor, is a “great counterpoint to the acting business, which is an abstraction—you do something, it’s up on a piece of film, and everybody argues whether it’s good or bad.” [On the ranch], you dig a hole and plant an oak tree—and I’m sure I’ve planted a thousand of them—real. it’s It exists, and you can watch it grow.” Selleck lived in a Los Angeles apartment that he decorated with the help of designer James Blakeley III before purchasing the ranch in 1988. Prior to that, he and his wife resided in a three-bedroom, three-bathroom home on Oahu, Hawaii, where his hit series Magnum P.I. was filmed in the 1980s.