Simon Baker
Simon Baker is an actor, born 1969.
Simon Baker (born 1969) came out of Australian soap opera, on E Street in the early 1990s, and reached Hollywood in 1997 with a supporting role as Matt Reynolds in L.A. Confidential. The film opened the door; American television kept him. The Guardian ran from 2001 to 2004 and brought a Golden Globe nomination in 2002, and then The Mentalist gave him Patrick Jane from 2008 to 2015, along with an Emmy nomination in 2009.
Patrick Jane is worth pausing on, because it is a strange piece of casting that worked. The character is a fake psychic turned police consultant, so the actor has to be charming in a way the audience can see through and the other characters cannot. Baker plays it with an unbroken pleasantness that reads as warmth or contempt depending on the scene, and the show ran for years on the audience's inability to decide.
The film career has repeatedly used the same quality against him. Christian Thompson in The Devil Wears Prada is charm as a warning sign. Jared Cohen in Margin Call is charm near the top of an institution about to fail. Riley in Land of the Dead is the rare part where he is simply the competent one. He directs as well as acts, and has gone back to Australian work, including Boy Swallows Universe in 2024.
Movies (25)
- The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
- L.A. Confidential (1997)
- Land of the Dead (2005)
- Margin Call (2011)
- The Ring Two (2005)
- Red Planet (2000)
- Sex and Death 101 (2007)
- Most Wanted (1997)
- I Give It a Year (2013)
- The Killer Inside Me (2010)
- Ride with the Devil (1999)
- High Ground (2021)
- Klara and the Sun (2026)
- Not Forgotten (2009)
- The Lodger (2009)
- The Affair of the Necklace (2001)
- Something New (2006)
- Judas Kiss (1998)
- Breath (2017)
- Breath (2017)
- Book of Love (2004)
- Sunset Strip (2000)
- Women in Trouble (2009)
- Here and Now (2018)
- Limbo (2023)
TV (7)
Where to start with Simon Baker
The Mentalist is the obvious entry and genuinely the best use of him: a case-of-the-week procedural that is really a long character study of a man performing recovery. You do not need all of it. The first two seasons make the argument.
L.A. Confidential is the best film he appears in, though the part is small and the picture belongs to other people. The Devil Wears Prada and Margin Call use his surface most intelligently, and Margin Call is worth it for the boardroom scenes where nobody raises their voice. Land of the Dead is the odd one out, a Romero zombie picture with Baker as the lead, and better than its reputation. Boy Swallows Universe is the recent Australian work and the least glossy thing he has done.