US film and television actor Michael Jace has been arrested after allegedly shooting his wife dead, police say.
The 51-year-old, famous for the police drama series The Shield, was detained "for the killing of his wife of nine years, April", said Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detective Lyman Doster on Tuesday.
The LAPD was treating the shooting as a murder related to domestic violence, he added. Two children were in the house at the time of the killing.
Jace has also appeared in films, including Forrest Gump, Boogie Nights and Planet of the Apes.
The TV series The Shield followed a movie of the same name in which he played officer Julien Lowe.
The actor allegedly called 911 on Monday evening and said his 40-year-old wife had been shot and that he had pulled the trigger, according to the TMZ celebrity news website.
"I shot my wife," he told police from the family home in the Hyde Park neighbourhood south of downtown Los Angeles, according to sources cited by TMZ.
Multiple shots were fired in the incident, according to the Los Angeles Times, which reported that his wife had returned home 10-15 minutes earlier after fetching the couple's sons from baseball practice.
Jace was formally arrested about 3am on Tuesday, booked for murder and held in lieu of $US1 million ($A1.1 million) bail.
He is due to make a first appearance in court on Thursday.
The two children involved, both under 10 years old, were taken into protective custody, said LAPD detective Raquel Cruz.
Jace was previously married to Jennifer Bitterman but they were divorced in 2002.
