NCIS star Mark Harmon maintains he’s a team player and refuses to take credit for the popular CBS series’ success, he tells Tracy Smith in an interview for CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH CHARLES OSGOOD to be broadcast May 5, 2013 (9:00 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network.

Harmon tells Smith he never takes credit, “because I don’t believe it’s just me. You know, I believe we all do it together here, I do.”

Harmon plays agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS, a lead investigator who is also a good guy. His co-stars tell Smith that Harmon is as good in real life as the character he plays on TV. Co-star Michael Weatherly says Harmon is “a pretty ordinary guy for someone who’s the biggest TV star in the world.”

Harmon talks with Smith about his role on NCIS, his career, the Oklahoma medical clinic he built with a group of friends, his designation as People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1986 and the night he yanked a teenager out of a burning car in 1996.

Even in saving the teen, now grown, Harmon is reluctant to take credit, saying he could have been killed in the process. “I won’t take credit for it,” he says. “If the car blows up and I’m there next to the car, then you’re talking about two young boys that don’t have a father and you’d be doing this interview with my wife and talking about how stupid I was. Right?”

As for NCIS, Smith asks Harmon how he’d react if the producers said they needed to kill off his character. “Rock on,” he tells Smith. “I’m a team guy… I think anybody can leave. I think we all think that here. And that’s kind of surprising on one level. The other level – it’s what we do. It’s not an actor’s choice. Our choice is to play the role. And that’s all I’ve ever tried to do.”

Smith’s interview with Harmon will be broadcast this week on CBS SUNDAY MORNING. Rand Morrison is the executive producer.

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Press Contact:  Richard Huff                 212-975-3328                     HuffR@cbsnews.com