Tom Selleck has always been a bit of a Hollywood enigma, due in no small part to his preference for living as far away from the limelight as possible, but he has still managed to remain a staple in TV crime dramas for more than four decades. In a recent interview with People magazine, Selleck credits his career longevity to striking a balance between work (he currently stars on Blue Bloods, 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 said, adding, “My relationships and my ranch keep me sane.” The ranch was previously a working avocado farm and still houses more than 1,500 native trees, which Selleck maintains himself. “I do grunt work and I make the rounds,” he told the magazine. “I like watching things grow. It’s a retreat.” Originally built back in the 1930s, the property has quite the pedigree—Dean Martin previously owned the home before selling it to car dealer Fletcher Jones in 1969 for about $250,000. Selleck paid a little over $5 million for the place when he purchased it in 1988, according to The Los Angeles Times.
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The Spanish colonial-style ranch house boasts eight bedrooms plus staff accommodations, and the property includes 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. In a 2018 interview with Closer Weekly, the actor called the ranch 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’ve probably planted a thousand of them—it’s real. It’s there, and you can watch it grow.” Before buying the ranch in 1988, Selleck lived in a Los Angeles apartment that he decorated with the help of designer James Blakeley III. And before that, he and his wife lived in a three-bedroom, three-bathroom house in Oahu, Hawaii, where his hit series Magnum P.I. was filmed during the 1980s.
