Everybody loves themselves some Mark Harmon.
And yet despite all that love, you don't hear too much about the NCIS star in the tabloids.
Here are some things you may not know about the man behind TV's Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
In the early 1970s, the abilities Harmon displayed playing football at Pierce College in Oklahoma
led to some high-profile offers from college squads.
But according to Los Angeles Daily News, Harmon turned down a spot on the title-contending
University of Oklahoma football team, instead opting to play for a school that was almost
literally in his backyard, UCLA.
And he turned out to be a real steal for the Bruins.
In 1972, Harmon led UCLA to a 17-14 victory over Nebraska, breaking the Cornhuskers' unbelievable
32 game winning streak, as PAC-12 reported.
"At 18 having a chance to come out of that tunnel in front of 90,000 people, that was
a dream come true."
Harmon's squad amassed a record of 17 to 5 over two seasons, and his numbers were good
enough to get some interest from the pros, according to Biography, but he turned down
offers to focus on school instead.
"I never had aspirations for that, I played with a lot of guys who did.
22 guys off the team I played on went on to some sort of a pro career."
He completed his communications degree, which, as an actor, he's actually used.
Harmon didn't always want to be an actor.
He felt the calling only after he'd tried out some other careers that he ultimately
failed at, or just hated.
When asked by a reporter from Men's Health what career he would have pursued if the whole
acting thing hadn't worked out, Harmon said he'd have been a carpenter, adding,
"I tried to do that, but I just couldn't get hired.
I enjoyed getting up and doing that in the morning; I enjoyed the drive to work.
For me it was about materials and doing right."
After that, Harmon said he moved on to what he called being a "shoe salesman," but it
was a bit more involved than that: He was a national sales rep for a major shoe company.
"I worked for Adidas for about eight months."
The job required a fair amount of travel, and it was then that he realized he had to
get out.
He explained,
"I was coming back from Boston and I was sitting next to a 33-year-old who was talking about
trying to make pension at 65.
He was drinking his second martini by the time we were wheels up.
He was miserable in his job and he was trying to maintain the job.
I went home, got in my car, drove out to the place where I worked, and gave my notice."
Most seasoned actors that are veterans of the medium of television don't attain that
status with just one hit show that seems to last forever.
Sure, Harmon has been playing steely, extremely competent special agent Gibbs on NCIS since
the first term of the George W. Bush administration, but it's kind of a "happily ever after" type
of thing.
Casting directors loved to book Harmon as the lead of TV shows, but his gigs up to NCIS
were all relatively short-lived.
Before his breakthrough role as Dr. Robert Caldwell on NBC's award-winning '80s ensemble
medical drama, St. Elsewhere, he appeared in multiple shows, including 240-Robert, in
which he played a search and rescue guy for 13 episodes.
He also portrayed a senator in the nighttime soap Flamingo Road.
After St. Elsewhere, Harmon went elsewhere, and landed roles on even more TV shows, including
the forgotten crime drama Charlie Grace.
Harmon has been on television fairly consistently for the better part of 40 years.
So, why did he never go on to become a big-time movie star in the way other former television
actors, like George Clooney and Will Smith, did?
It's likely because he didn't want to, preferring the relative routine nature of television
production.
Movies generally film for a few weeks or months and might shoot anywhere in the world, which
requires an actor to fly off and leave their family a few times a year.
A TV series, however, is often taped at the same studio, week after week, for an entire
season of episodes.
That was the better option for Harmon, and he made his choice during an emotional moment.
A few months after Harmon's first child was born, he left his wife, Mork and Mindy's Pam
Dawber, and their baby behind to jet off to New Guinea for a movie.
The proud dad told CBS News in 2013,
"And our oldest had just taken his first steps the day I left.
And I came back three months later and he got out of the car by himself and walked up
the sidewalk and grabbed onto my leg at the airport."
In that moment, Harmon said, he decided that the big movie paychecks were not worth it
if it meant he would, in his words, "miss all this."
Wanting to stay close to home and family meant taking on TV work produced in the Los Angeles
area.
"If I gain strength from anything or anyone, it's my family."
Despite deciding long ago to focus on television, Harmon did star in a few major movies, including
1987's Summer School, a silly, school-set comedy in which Harmon played a cool teacher
named Mr. Shoop, tasked with helping a motley crew of high school flunkies from flunking
out, all while trying to romance a coworker played by Kirstie Alley.
It's one of Harmon's only real film successes, and he almost didn't get the gig, because
he actively tried to talk the director out of hiring him.
Almost improbably, Summer School was helmed by a comedy legend: Carl Reiner, creator of
The Dick Van Dyke Show and director of Steve Martin's The Jerk.
If anybody has comedy instincts and can tell if an actor will be funny on the screen, it's
Reiner, and he pursued Harmon for the lead in Summer School.
Harmon, in turn, rejected his advances.
He told The Daily Beast in 2014 that he tried to get Reiner to instead cast Tom Hanks because,
as Harmon claimed,
"I'm not funny!"
Of course, Harmon signed on to the film in the end.
It's no secret that Harmon acts on a TV show where good guys save the day week after week,
but he apparently applies his work to real-life situations.
About 20 years ago, Harmon saved a kid's life after a horrific car wreck.
According to CBS News, in January 1996 two teenagers got into a nasty car accident very
close to Harmon's Los Angeles home.
One of the young riders crawled out of the vehicle on their own accord, but the other
was trapped in the burning automobile.
Thankfully, Harmon approached the flaming wreckage with a sledgehammer, smashed a window
with it, and pulled the boy to freedom, but not quite yet to safety.
Harmon later told CBS News,
"He was full fire on his back.
[So I] put him down and got on top of him."
The NCIS star successfully smothered out the flames.
The boy was burned, but ultimately made a full recovery and went on to become a personal
trainer in the L.A. area.
It's been running for so long now, and generated so many spinoffs of its own, that it's easy
to forget that NCIS was a spinoff itself.
It began its life in 2003 as a show called Navy NCIS, and it came from CBS' military
legal drama JAG.
Both hit shows were created by prolific TV writer Donald P. Bellisario.
But his impressive resumé apparently couldn't save Bellisario's job from the wrath of Harmon.
In 2007, Michael Ausiello of TV Guide reported that Harmon couldn't tolerate
the work culture at NCIS under Bellisario's command, or what a show insider called a "chaotic
management style."
The show's lead actor resented routinely working 16-hour days, as well as Bellisario's tendency
to, quote, "micro-manage everything" and not finish script pages until the last minute.
In this battle of star versus showrunner, the star won.
Bellisario resigned from his position on his own show.
In 2018, Pauley Perrette left NCIS after more than 350 episodes as fan-favorite forensic
scientist Abby.
At first, it seemed like the actress was simply ready to move on.
"I think, I mean I hope I'm not wrong, but I think that I've earned a little bit of time
to myself."
But that wasn't quite the case, or at least not entirely.
After her last episode aired, Perrette tweeted the alarming news that she'd endured, in her
words, "multiple physical assaults" on set.
Perrette didn't feel safe at work, from those alleged incidents as well as the time Harmon
allegedly brought in his pit bull, Dave, in October 2016.
According to sources that spoke with Radar Online, Dave reportedly bit a member of the
crew with such ferocity that the tech had to get 16 stitches.
The insiders claimed that Harmon was, quote, "obviously horrified" and left Dave at home
after that, until one occasion when his dog sitter plans fell through.
Harmon allegedly arranged for the dog to hang out in his trailer all day, and the cast and
crew were reportedly fine with that, except for Perrette.
The on-set source alleged that Perrette was "furious" that the potentially dangerous dog
was back on set, she reportedly, quote, "refused to listen [and] started shouting" when Harmon
tried to explain the situation.
She then allegedly wouldn't shoot any scenes with Harmon and wouldn't even sit near him
at the table read, giving him the silent treatment whenever he tried to talk to her.
Way back in 2002, about a year before he began his long stint portraying Gibbs on NCIS, Harmon
had a role on another highly-watched broadcast TV drama with a loyal fan base: NBC's presidency
saga The West Wing.
Harmon appears in the final four episodes of the series' third season as Simon Donovan,
a Secret Service agent assigned to protect the White House press secretary after she
receives death threats.
That professional relationship quickly develops into a personal one, as romantic sparks fly
between the pair.
But, spoiler alert, this love wasn't to be.
In the third season finale, Simon was shot and killed while attempting to stop an armed
robbery.
Fans of The West Wing and Harmon were left brokenhearted, and so were some members of
the show's crew.
The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014,
"When setting Mark up for his last scene, the women who placed the squibs in his suit
were quick to point out to me that they'd put them in places where he could survive.
And they let me know if I didn't want my tires slashed he'd survive."
Sorkin refused to give in to the crew members' request to let Simon live, though.
He added,
"Things in stories have to happen for a reason."
In November 2011, the USA network interrupted its regularly scheduled programming of reruns
of Harmon's NCIS to air Certain Prey, a made-for-TV movie starring the series' very own...Mark
Harmon.
It was based on one of author John Sandford's Prey crime novels, of which there are more
than 20, about Minneapolis deputy police chief Lucas Davenport.
According to The New York Times, it seemed as if USA was looking for a recurring crime
movie franchise fronted by a bankable, popular TV star, similarly to how CBS had installed
Magnum, P.I. and Blue Bloods star Tom Selleck in its Jesse Stone franchise.
But this side project turned out to be a one-hit wonder for USA, as no more Prey movies with
Harmon were produced.
In fact, the 2011 flick marked the last time Harmon portrayed anyone on screen besides
his NCIS character, which he claims to have no complaints about.
"I don't think any show is forever, and I think that they all end at some point, but
for right now this is a really pleasant place to work."
However, in late 2018, CBS announced that it would revive the Prey concept, with Harmon
again on board, this time as an executive producer.
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