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Full Name: Simon Baker…(a.k.a Simon Baker-Denny)
Birthday: July 30, 1969
Birth Place: Launceston, Tasmania
Nationality: Australian
Reason for coming to the US: opportunity. "I love working in Australia," Simon Baker says, "but the fact is, there’s only 17 or 18 million people in the country and it limits the amount of product. There’ a lot of good actors and it’s very, very competitive. It's not that it’s less competitive here, but there’s a lot more options."
What he misses most about Australia: the pubs, neighborhood coffeehouses and community feel of his homeland.
Parents: Mother: Elizabeth Labberton (a drama teacher) and father: Barry Baker (a mechanic) divorced when Simon was 2. Stepfather: Tom Denny (a butcher) married Simon’s mother when he was 5.
Siblings: Sister Terri, 34 (doctor), also 3 half siblings.
Raised: Lennox Head, 12km north of Ballina on NSW's north coast, New South Whales in Byron Bay.
Marital Status: He met his wife, Rebecca Rigg (best known as Fatty Finn on Spotswood) in 1991 on a blind date at the Royal Hotel in Sydney's Paddington. They married in 1998.
Children: Stella Breeze: born August 8th, 1993, Claude Blue: born in 1997, and Harry Friday: born on September 19, 2001.
Thoughts on having babies: "It blew me out that a perfectly formed little person can come from such a simple, yet intimate, moment. How many people make love to get their rocks off without being spiritually moved by the potential to create human life? We all take sex for granted."
Pets: rabbits
Current Residence: (since December of 2002) a white mansion in an exclusive Malibu, CA neighborhood equipped with a private beach.
Height: 5’ 10"
Eye Color: Green
Orientation: Right-handed
Education: Ballina High School
Childhood memory: As a child, Simon underwent a surfing initiation involving being driven part-way down a mountain in a car boot, thrown in a swamp and made to sit under seats on the school bus.
Thoughts about his childhood: "I think I'm basically a classic middle child who wants some Goddamn attention!"
Occupation: Actor
Before his big break: "I worked with an electrician, and as a bricklayer," he says. "I made pizzas. I sold time-shares. I was a cellar man [receiving keg deliveries at a pub]." Simon also studied nursing for 3 months.
First acting jobs: Did a Drumstick ad as a young model, worked as an extra in a Melissa Tkautz pop video, and in 1989 joined the cast of E-Street after executive producer Forrest Redlich discovered him in Melissa Tkautz’s video, Heart Break High, and Home and Away.
Thoughts about working on Soaps: "I’ve experienced television where it’s like ‘Shut up, hit the marks and don’t hit the furniture.’ I’ve experienced that before and I’d rather stand in the dole queue or sell flowers on the corner."
Feature Film Debut: LA Confidential
Why he is an actor: "It's because I kind of obsess on people and the way we live and the way we interact, and I love expressing that. I don't find it easy to articulate or write about. I find it a lot easier to express through various situations."
Most important acting rule of thumb: to be on the same acting wavelength as the story and director. "You can make all the choices you want to make --- and they can be brilliant choices --- but if you're not sharing the same vision as the director, you're going to look like an idiot no matter how good you are."
Closest friends in Hollywood: Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, Hugh Jackman, and Jeffrey Wright.
Thoughts about his career: "It’s all happening at once but better than nothing happening at all, I say," he says. "It's a really good time."
Thoughts about being a sex symbol: "When I was younger, I was more concerned about the way I looked and my physical appearance. I’ve bred. I found my mate and I bred and the only concern I have about physical appearance these days is that I can’t have too much of a beer gut because it hurts my back. I can’t get out of shape for the job. I am what I am. I’m an actor and what comes along with that is a certain amount of kudos and public awareness. It is healthier to shift the focus away from yourself. The best thing you can do for your children is to give them your attention."
Talents: "What am I good at? Lying. I'm an actor!"
Dislikes: Mediocrity. "I hate mediocrity. It’s death."
Turn-Ons: "Hearing my kids laugh, a good cuppa tea, dancing with my wife."
Turn-Offs: "Loud people."
Sports to play/do: surf, water polo, and volleyball.
Favorite TV show as a kid: Hill Street Blues and Get Smart
Toiletry he can honestly live without: deodorant...he admitted to not wearing deodorant saying that drinking enough water flushes out impurities, making this toiletry unnecessary…oh and he also thinks that toiletries in general are for girls.
A dancing man?: Close friend Naomi Watts says, "He's a great dancer. If he’s had a couple of drinks and there’s some good stones playing, he’s apt to jump into a Mick Jagger characterization."
On the weekend you might find him: Surfing, building shelves, barbecuing, kicking the ball around the yard with his oldest son, Claude, and taking the kiddies to birthday parties.
Summer plans for 2002: Spend time with his family, sleep, visit a surf camp, and teach his 9-year-old daughter, Stella to surf.
Aspirations: To direct but wishes to "remain organic about it" and "to be able to have a good, solid, healthy relationship with my wife and children for the rest of their lives and my life."
Did You Know?
1. Simon hired a driver so he could study scripts for "The Guardian" on his way to and from work. ("I don't ever take my bag out of the car.")
2. He's an accomplished swimmer, who used to compete in water polo
3. He shot the final episode for the debut season of his hit TV show, The Guardian, until 3 AM, celebrated at the cast's champagne party for two hours
4. The morning after he wrapped season One of "The Guardian" Sony Pictures delivered a brand new surf board to his home as a way of saying thank you.
5. Baker took the family to Europe in mid-2000 when he filmed the movie The Affair of the Necklace
6. His ironclad rule is to never bring work home.
8. Because Simon didn’t want Rebecca surrendering "the last bastion of womanliness" to a team of doctors and nurses they opted for a home birth when having their first child Stella.
9. To keep Simon’s American accent on the money creator and head writer, David Hollander, makes a dialect cheat sheet filled with each episode’s trickier Yankee pronunciations and has it tacked to the wall inside Simon’s trailer.
10. If you went into Simon’s trailer on the set of ‘The Guardian’ you would see: a wallpaper of color photocopied snapshots of the Blue Mountains of Australia, west of Sydney, a European chateau, a cornfield in New Zealand, a little village in Italy, a beach in Hawaii, and ice fishing in Vermont.
11. Simon says he watches the show in black and white, in order to separate himself from what he's seeing and not be so critical of his performance.
12. Actress Nicole Kidman is Simon’s youngest son’s god-mother. |
