Tom Selleck "wasn't taken seriously" early on his career.

Tom Selleck wasn't taken seriously early on in his career

Tom Selleck wasn't taken seriously early on in his career

The 79-year-old actor shot to fame after taking on the leading role of Thomas Magnum in the 1980s detective series 'Magnum P.I' but admitted that before that "struggled" to use his good looks to get where he wanted to be.

He told The Telegraph: "Everybody has a cross to bear as an actor, and everybody has a task to be taken seriously. In the age I was going into acting, Dustin Hoffman didn’t have as tough a time getting to be taken seriously. I’m sure he did for years, but my first acting coach said, 'Look, you walk through the door, you’re 6ft 4in, you’re pretty good-looking, Tom, you have to deliver that'

"And that was a struggle – in that era it was probably harder to be taken seriously [looking like him] than in the 1950s. Unless you delivered. I think a lot of the time I walked in the door and they didn’t take me seriously."

But the Emmy Award-winning star- who has been married to Jillie Mack since 1987 and has 35-year-old daughter Hannah with her - noted that he has "never been totally comfortable" with the idea that a lack of privacy automatically comes with being famous as he noted that his first wife Jacqueln Ray got the "rough end" of things when he first became well-known.

He said: "I have never been totally comfortable with the expression “it goes with the territory” – people who say that have probably never been in the territory. But I had to find a way to keep at least some part of me private. Jacki got the rough end of it.

"They said I left her because of Magnum, well we split up about a year before the pilot, so all those things were a little bruising."

Tagged in