Mark Harmon says his acting career began with a cold call and a little nerve. The man who later played Leroy Jethro Gibbs for 19 seasons on NCIS said his first real break came in 1973, after he had already decided advertising was not going to be enough for him.
Harmon said he told his parents he knew he had to get out of advertising and do something else. He added that he had been in acting class and did not know where to go from there, so he picked up the phone and called Roy Huggins. Huggins spoke with him for a couple of minutes before inviting him to come in and talk, and Harmon said, “And I said ‘OK,’ and I went into Universal, and I went into Mark VII, which at that time at Universal, was a big enchilada, man.”
That call helped set the path for a career that moved quickly once the door opened. Harmon made a guest appearance on Ozzie’s Girls in 1973, then appeared as Officer Gus Corbin in Adam-12 in 1975 and turned up in Police Woman that same year. He followed with a guest role in Laverne & Shirley in 1976, supporting parts in Comes a Horseman in 1978 and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure in 1979, and landed Dr. Robert Caldwell on St. Elsewhere in 1983. By 1986, People magazine had named him Sexiest Man Alive, and later film work included Summer School in 1987, The Presidio in 1988, Crossfire Trail in 2001 and Freaky Friday in 2003.
The turning point matters because Harmon’s path was not built on instant access or a powerful agent. He said he did not have one when he was trying to start acting, and he credited a single phone call with opening the first serious door. That background also fits the family he came from: he is the son of actress Elyse Knox and Tom Harmon, and his sister Kristin was married to actor and singer Ricky Nelson.
There is a clean symmetry to the way Harmon describes that first break. He says Roy Huggins could have brushed off the call, but did not — “He had to be nice, right? If he just goes, ‘I’m not taking that call, it’s over.'” The rest of Harmon’s career, including his casting as special agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS and his exit from the series in 2021 after 19 seasons, followed from that start. He later reprised Gibbs in NCIS: Origins, closing the loop on the role that made him one of television’s most durable leads.