Selleck Returns To Acting After Three-Year Hiatus

The rumor mill has been working overtime on Tom Selleck the past three years.

You know how it is. The poor guy can’t buy a role. He’s unhirable. Yesterday’s news. He’ll work in your next movie for food. It makes a dandy headline: Selleck Sweats Cinema Slump. Magnum, R.I.P.

The reality happens to be something else altogether, however. His exile from the industry the past three years has been self-imposed and had nothing to do with his being considered damaged goods due to his flopping film career. He actually took time off strictly because he wanted to - and because he could.

Deal with it, Hollywood.

“It wasn’t easy,” said Selleck, 50, of his decision to take time off to devote more time to his wife and daughter (now 6) and to his charity work.

“There were money worries, even though I didn’t really need it. You just start worrying that your lifestyle is going to be affected at some point. And when you’re unemployed - as I have been most of my professional life - it’s hard to turn down work and get off of that roller coaster.”

Selleck returns to the acting wars tonight in the TNT movie “Broken Trust,” his first part in three years and first television role since the 1988 cancellation of the CBS private-eye series that made him a star: “Magnum, P.I.”

It’s a decided meaty departure for the likable actor, portraying a promising municipal judge named Tim Nash who is recruited by the U.S. Justice Department to ferret out corrupt members of the bench - embroiling him in a moral and ethical crisis.

You don’t instantly think of Selleck for an intellectual thriller. But he wishes we would.

“I need to change some perceptions,” Selleck said, looking typically tanned and fit, relaxing in a suite at the Century Plaza Hotel while promoting “Broken Trust.”

“I’m hoping that this is a breakthrough movie. But I didn’t do it for that purpose. All I know is, I can do more than I’m getting offered. I saw ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ and I wonder, geez, why didn’t Clint (Eastwood) call me for that? Maybe I’m just not in that club. I don’t know.

“All I get offered is movies that are made as vehicles for me. But I want people to think of me for supporting roles, for heavies, for real work. I don’t want them to think I have a price that’s unreachable. I don’t care about the money. I want to be an actor first.”

If it sounds as if Selleck has grown frustrated, it’s because he has.

He believes he’s gotten a bum rap for his conservative politics and for the perception that his feature films - with the exception of 1987’s “3 Men and a Baby” - have all bombed.

When one scours the list of Selleck films over the past dozen years, the hits (or even semihits) appear precious and few. His resume includes “High Road to China” (1983), “Lassiter” (1984), “Runaway” (1984), “Her Alibi” (1989), “An Innocent Man” (1989), “3 Men and a Little Lady” (1989), “Quigley Down Under” (1990), “Folks!” (1992), “Mr. Baseball” (1992) and “Christopher Columbus: The Discovery” (1992).

“What you don’t read is that every one of my movies except ‘Runaway’ made money for the studios,” Selleck maintained.

“But blockbusters are everything now. I want the movies to make money, but to have the benchmark for success be $100 million is nonsensical. There’s no such thing as singles, doubles or triples anymore. It’s all home runs and strikeouts, and nothing in between, and that’s lousy for the industry.”

Selleck complained that the “3 Men and a Baby” sequel, “3 Men and a Little Lady,” earned $78 million at the domestic box office “and was perceived as a disappointment. I don’t understand that.”

Yet perceptions die hard, and those who make decisions in this town could well see Selleck’s three-year hiatus and then acceptance of a TV-movie role - on cable, no less - as the plight of a man desperate for work.

There were some in Hollywood who applauded Selleck’s evident difficulty finding a job, since he remains a member of Hollywood’s small circle of right-leaning celebrities. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis are two others.

Yet having his conservative belief system heard never has consumed Selleck, he said.

In fact, he has studiously avoided being lumped in with the Republican soapbox crowd.

“But the press has its own agenda,” Selleck said, “and too often it’s to distort and mock people’s beliefs and activities. It’s the tabloidization of the mainstream, and we all suffer as a result of it.”

That same penchant for sensationalism, and the lust to drag a big name down, has dogged Selleck during the past year in particular.

“Yeah, I saw articles that said I couldn’t get arrested in this town,” Selleck said. “It’s a good story, but it’s a lazy angle, because it doesn’t happen to be true. And besides, I’ve never seen doing television as slumming.”

The fact of the matter is, said Selleck, he had a six-picture, pay-or-play deal on the table with Disney throughout his three years off.

Originally, he was going to take only a year off, but then the scripts offered him through Disney proved unworkable. So he turned them down.

In the process, Selleck passed up an opportunity to make “an awful lot of money.” The six-film deal is now a four-film deal.

“I can finally say, ‘Hey, I had a choice, guys,”’ Selleck said. “In hindsight, it was the right decision. The movies either weren’t made or weren’t very good. But it did concern me that people would think no one would hire me. People started treating me differently. The word spread that I was on the ‘out’ list.

“It’s just so hard to be emotionally secure enough in this business to get off of the treadmill for a while. Every actor I know feels as if he’s about this far away from his last job ever.”

Another thing that galls Selleck is the gridlock at Universal Studios that has delayed a proposed big-screen version of “Magnum, P.I.”

The studio showed enormous interest in the project a few years ago, then dragged its feet.

The film wouldn’t have been just another lighthearted episode of the Hawaiian-based series, but a dark, gloomy story in which Thomas Magnum seeks revenge for a friend’s cold-blooded murder.

“I got some very heavyweight personal commitments from people on this, but the ball’s in their court,” Selleck said.

“If I could have shopped this project to another studio, it would already have made a couple hundred million dollars. There’s enormous interest in it. It’s just so frustrating.”

This feature snag contrasts with Selleck’s eight seasons (1980-88) on the CBS series, which he called “the perfect series experience, just the ultimate. It was also the most successful off-network hour in the history of TV syndication, by far.”

Yet Selleck has no plans to return to series TV anytime soon. He has received numerous offers, but said, “If I took time off to see my daughter and then turned around and did a series, she’d be asleep when I went to work and asleep when I got home. What would be the point?”

Selleck is trying in some way to make up for the lack of time he had with his now 27-year-old son from a previous marriage. And taking the years off helped him emotionally.

“I’m a lot calmer about the fact I’ll always be able to work and support my family,” he said. “I know it sounds funny, but three years ago I wasn’t so sure about that.”