The Fabulous Baker Boy

From : Herald Sun
by Maree Curtis

"You can all leave now." Simon Baker seems a little tense and the tone in his voice stops the three female PR's ?one from Australia,two from the US who are travelling with him (not his idea) ?mid-sentence. Unfortunately they are standing behind me so I can't see their faces,butthe sudden, indignant silence is worth a million words.Assumingthey'd be staying for the interview they were chatting and making coffee. But Baker is exhibiting most un-celebrity like behaviour. Is he seriously suggesting he can handle a journalist on his own? Apparently so. He repeats himself, slightly louder. "You can go now. I'll call if I need anything."

It's so Nick Fallin: arrogant, curt, dismissive. You should never make the mistake of confusing an actor with the roles he plays, but in this case it's impossible not to do so. If Baker were wearing a dark suit and tie (instead of jeans and a jumper), and if his curly blond hair was short and neatly combed (rather than cutely messy), you would swear you were in the room with Fallin, Baker's troubled lawyer in the enormously successful TV show The Guardian.

But, as the hotel room closes behind the hapless three, the change in Baker's demeanor is striking. He relaxes. "God, I hate all that shit." He puts his feet up on the couch, makes himself comfy and smiles. A zillion-megawatt, light-up-a-room smile that at such close range almost takes your breath away. Which is a good thing, it makes me look at his face: Baker's jumper has ridden up and his tanned trimmed tummy was proving somewhat distracting. After all, this is a man who last year made US magazine People's list of the world's 50 most beautiful people.

Just as we are settling in for a chat, his mobile phone rings. He apologises, checks the caller ID, and says he has to take the call, it's his wife, Rebecca Rigg, ringing from their room several floors above. Naturally, I listen to every word: Yes, he is fine. He's just starting he interview. Is everything OK with her? "Bye sweetheart. I love you."

Later, he will tell me that Rigg provides a foil for his natural impulsiveness. "I'm incredibly in the moment, to the point where sometimes it's annoying to people because I want to go, `Let's do it, let's be here, come with me on this ride'. It can be fun, but it can also be very destructive. Bec is my grounder. It's very good, it's necessary."

Rigg has been grounding Baker since the two met on a blind date at Paddington's Royal Hotel in 1991. At the time, it was Rigg who had the acting career (Fatty Finn, Spotswood, E Street), while Baker (who was then known as Simon Baker Denny) was making his living as a model. "Bec still gives me such shit about that. "

And she has been there for the whole ride: the early soapie fame in Australia that saw Baker win a Logie for best new talent in 1993 for his role in E Street, and for the six years he worked his "arse off" as a jobbing actor in the US before being catapulted on to Hollywood's A?list and earring a Golden Globe best actor nomination last year with The Guardian. "In the early days in America, Rebecca did a couple of TV series and since then she has been offered a couple of opportunities, but we have three kids and she has decided it's too difficult for her to work at this point. She has been incredibly generous in allowing me the opportunities. She has sacrificed a lot."

In some ways, Baker is Australia's most unsung Hollywood success story. He has worked steadily since arriving in LA on Christmas Eve in 1995 with Rigg, the then two year old Stella and what he estimated would be enough money to last three months. Almost immediately he was cast, along with Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, in a small but critically acclaimed role in LA Confidential and has since worked with some of the biggest names in film, including Oscar winners Adrien Brody and Hilary Swank (The Affair of the Necklace) and director Ang Lee (Ride With the Devil). "I don't think people realise I've made nine films. There's a couple I'm really proud of and there are some I'm glad didn't see the light of day. But I've had to support a family. I was eight days into being a 24 year old when Stella was born. There are a number of jobs I've taken that I can definitely say I should never have done and I despised taking them artistically. But I needed the money. And I've also worked with some amazing people."

It is interesting, given his now high profile and the plethora of scripts it brings his way, that for his 10th movie Baker has chosen a small indie production called Nights in Phnom Penh by first time feature film director Alan Brown. The film, which he describes as a "look at the psychology of infidelity", also stars Australian Frances O'Connor. "It's just a little film, but I found it a wonderfully lean, interesting script, not overwritten. I like artistically what we do with The Guardian, but at the same time it's commercial TV. I wanted something different."

Apart from the security of knowing that if he felt like it, which he doesn't, he would never have to work again, thanks to the "ridiculously handsome amount of money" a hit US series brings, life hasn't changed much for Baker. The Guardian has bought him a house with a private beach at Malibu where he surfs every morning,and a driver for the 45 minute each way commute to the studio, but Baker isn't into the LA party scene. When he does make a rare red carpet appearance, he does so with aplomb: last year when he presented an award at the Emmys he was the only male to make the 10 Best Dressed list. An interesting leap from his early days in Australia appearing in commercials for Drumstick ice creams and dancing in Melissa Tkautzs music video Read My Lips.

With 16 hour days (having the driver allows him to learn his lines travelling to and from the studio) while The Guardian is being filmed, spare time is spent at home with Rigg, Stella, 10, Claude, 5, and Harry, 2, surfing, which is a passion, kicking a ball with the kids, barbecuing and hanging out with good friends including Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts. "I'm pretty much a homebody. I love being with Bec. I don't have a lot of very close friends. Although I have a lot of 'associates' now. I skirt around the edges of being involved in the society there. Nicole and Naomi are good friends of
ours. Bec and Nic and Naomi are inseparable. Bec went to school with Nic and they're very thick."

Indeed, when Kidman made her first public appearance following her separation from Tom Cruise at the premiere of her film The Others in 2001, she was supported by Watts on one side and a very pregnant Rigg on the other. Kidman is Harry's godmother and Rigg went into labour with Stella while she and Baker were attending Watts's farewell party when she left Australia for LA in 1993. When Baker and Rigg married in 1996, Watts was the bridesmaid. "The three of them are like the Witches of Eastwick."

Kidman calls Baker "Hippie Boy" and once described him in an interview as "incredibly masculine and strong, but he has a very sensitive side. You see that when he's with his wife and children". According to Watts, he's a great dancer, despite being shy. If he has had a couple of drinks and there's some good Stones playing, he's apt to jump into a Mick Jagger characterisation."

He laughs when I read the quotes. "I am incredibly shy and sometimes I get antisocial because I'm shy. Sometimes I don't like people because I'm shy, and sometimes I don't feel like giving of myself."

For a naturally shy person the public recognition that comes with a hit show can be difficult. Like the time Baker was in a deli in LA and was accosted by a fan wanting an autograph. Not having any paper, the braless woman lifted her shirt and asked Baker to sign her breasts. He ran away. "Herein lies the challenge of celebrity. To maintain a normalness in your existence. To be able to walk into a restaurant and see people turn their heads to look at you, the challenge is to not let it affect who you are."

It took Baker a while to work out who he is, and you sense it is a journey he is yet to complete. He was born Simon Lucas Baker, grew up as Simon Denny after his parents' marriage broke down when he was two and his mother remarried, changed his name to Baker Denny when he found his biological father and, four years ago, settled on Baker. "It was very frustrating for me: Who the f_ am I? I didn't know my name. Can we not talk about this?" Well, we don't have to talk about it, but he might as well tell me the details himself. He sees the sense of this.

"There was nothing Hollywood about me changing my name. It was about wanting to find out where you fit in the world and where you come from. A lot of that became more potent for me when I was about to become a father myself. So that was the beginning of the saga and it took me to 30 to change back to Baker. It was really a process of letting go a lot of emotional baggage and guilt and all that sort of stuff and realising I am of my own self who I am. So it was going full circle. Who you are and the moments that you have just before you go to sleep-if you're at peace in those moments, then nothing else matters."

And is he at peace in those moments? "I sometimes get anxious and regretful. On the whole family stuff, I'm trying to catch up on my extended family because it was somewhat of a disenfranchised experience, so I missed a lot. And now I have my own family, instead of going woe is me, I didn't have the wonderful family experience growing up, the buck stops here. I'm very protective of my family."

Indeed, family seems to be the over-riding priority in Baker's life. "I have a certain element of self destruction, self?loathing and the fact that I have a family and a wife has given me a sense of responsibility and a purpose and I owe a lot of where I am to that. My wife has always been a real rock for me."

Baker was born in Tasmania, his mother Elizabeth was a teacher and his father Barry was a school caretaker. They split when Baker was two and Elizabeth married a butcher named Tom Denny; they have since divorced. The family moved to Lennox Head, near Byron Bay in northern NSW. Baker's older sister Terri became a doctor and he has three younger half siblings. After scraping through Year 12, Baker moved to Sydney to attend nursing school. "It was a weird get out of town thing. I would have made a terrible nurse, I wouldn't have had the patience, 'Stop your bloody whingeing, I've got a hangover'."

After three months he quit nursing and worked in a pub with stints as a bricklayer, a waiter and a poolboy/bellboy at Sanctuary Cove in Queensland. "I met this guy who was doing commercials. We were going for a surf and he said he had to stop for an audition. I was in the waiting roomand the woman asked me if I wanted to audition. I got the commercial." Acting came about more by accident than design when E Street producer Forrest Redlich spotted Baker dancing in a music video. "I'd always thought Id like to be an actor, but I think everyone has that sort of fantasy. I was always the entertainer in the family. I think I adopted the role of the caretaker, make it all OK, make everybody laugh, come out of my room, 'Everyone OK now?' Go back to my room."

There's a knock on the door. It's the PRs telling us our time's up Baker is lying on the couch and makes no move to rouse himself. "We're still going," he yells at the door. "Go away." And they do.

"You know," he continues, "acting is the only way I've been able to articulate certain things. It's why I love acting, I want to be able to express things to people or for people that I can't necessarily rticulate. Acting is a form of _expression I wouldn't have had "

How interesting that he should find such a vent for self _expression in The Guardian's flawed Nick Fallin, a high flying corporate lawyer brought back to earth with a thud after being arrested for drug offences, and then sentenced to work in legal aid. The somewhat surly character is sorely tested as he trudges between the two disparate worlds. "But through that stunted personality there is so much I can explore," says Baker. "Nick Fallin is the kind of guy you'd like to love but he doesn't have a phone?line to the rest of the world. He's isolated from the world and he just can't make that leap. You will him to do it and when he does make the leap you see what a struggle it is for him. It's not about what he does, it's about what he doesn't do and what is not there, what's missing. "

Simon Baker is a bundle of contradictions - a sociable introvert who spurns self-analysis, a man who likes to live in the moment while worrying about education and health and the state of the world. "Yes, there are things about me that are diametrically opposed and I shift between them constantly. Not comfortably. I'm someone who craves simplicity. I am a worrier, absolutely, but you always have to look for the simplicity.

"I remember someone who was going through real emotional turmoil saying to me, 'If you look at the sky, it's still there'. The simplicity of things like that are the things that keep me centred. I think I probably am a bit of a mixed up mess of a man. But that's all right, I think if I was able to work everything out, then where is the mystery and challenge of life?"