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Articles - Aussie press
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The Fabulous Baker Boy Nine am on a Sunday morning is not the customary time you'd be expecting any showbiz types to schedule an interview. “Oh, Simon doesn't mind, he's up early with his kids,” the chirpy publicist informs me when I'm told of my scheduled meeting with Aussie actor Simon Baker. (Silly of me to think that maybe they'd consider the journalist would rather be sleeping at that hour.) Not only that, but Baker wants to meet at the very north end of Malibu (which stretches 40km) at a place called Paradise Cove (the setting for such famous 1960s California surfing movies such as Beach Blanket Bingo and Gidget), a lengthy hour-plus drive up the coast.
Feeling like I've driven halfway to San Francisco by the time I reach the designated meeting spot, I find the Baker clan, which today comprises wife Rebecca Rigg and their two youngest children, Claude, five, and Harry, three, happily nestled in a wooden booth facing oceanside at the Paradise Cove Beach Cafe, a quaint but anachronistic beach shack that looks as if it's way beyond its halcyon days.
Baker seems familiar with the travel-weary face of a visitor to this area. “I always schedule meetings up here,” he tells me with a hint of glee. “It gets people away from that whole LA thing and once you get here you can really chill out.” Baker leaves the family enclave and we move to another table to chat. After negotiating the encyclopedia-length menu, he winces. “It's such a great spot, but they just don't get breakfasts over here,” he laments, as super-sized plates of eggs, bacon and potatoes are delivered to tables all around us. “They're just screaming for a decent restaurant in this area, but there aren't any,” he says, as we mutually engage in the coffee dance that all Aussies based in the US recognise. We both order double espresso with a side of milk (the only way to get a half decent cup of coffee). Our milk is delivered in a huge mug and, as we try and get a dash into our coffees, we end up spilling it all over the table like a couple of babies, laughing at the silliness of it all.
Amid the cluster of noisy Sunday morning families that fill the restaurant, Baker fits right in. With his loose-fitting comfy clothes, tousled sandy hair and unshaven face, he's certainly handsome ' but in a more rugged way than the smoothed-out look that lighting and film cameras give him. At age 35, he's growing into his face, with those lines that (annoyingly, on a man) make him look even sexier. And there's that wonderful smile, which he flashes at me at regular intervals.
Like some of the emotionally distant characters he portrays, I expect to find Baker somewhat aloof, but to my surprise, he's quite the opposite. He displays a complete lack of ego and is, at times, quite confessional in his responses. “I read interviews that I've done and I sound like such a dickhead,” he laughs. “At first it really didn't seem like such a big decision,” he says of his move to the US in 1995. After a stint in the soapie E Street (for which he won a Best New Talent Logie in 1992), Baker was up for a new challenge. He already had two good mates who'd made the move; Nicole Kidman (who went to school with Rebecca and is Harry's godmother) and Naomi Watts (who served as Rigg's bridesmaid at the pair's wedding).
“It was a very different time back then. These days, an Australian actor can do one Australian film, and come over here and get work. Back then it didn't really matter what you had done back home, you had to come over here and start from scratch,” he says. “Now they're always looking at Aussie stuff, like we've been discovered as some freaky genetic talent pool.”
Doing the hard yards meant six long years of endless auditions, some good work (such as a pivotal role in LA Confidential, all the while waiting for that big break. But did he ever feel discouraged? “No, it was invigorating,” he protests. “Instead of reading one decent script every three months and everyone fighting to get in first, I'd be going to three auditions a day.”
Rigg, who's also an actor (she appeared in E Street and the movies Fatty Finn and Spotswood), was hunting for work, too, when they first arrived (in fact, she was probably better known in Australia than Baker when they relocated), but she now prefers to stay at home with the kids. She has, however, recently appeared in Ellie Parker, a film with pal Naomi Watts, which made its debut at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in January. “Her agent calls her every now and then and she says, 'I really don't know why you're bothering , I'm not that interested,'" says Baker.
And while Kidman and Watts are close friends, Baker says he doesn't really socialise with the LA Aussie contingent. “I think people sometimes think that Hollywood is like a suburb where we all hang out together,” he says. “I'm not the sort of person who'll call someone just for a chat. There's only this many people [he holds his hand up with fingers extended] that I would call in the world for a chat. People think I'm a pariah because I'm hopeless at returning e-mails,” he admits. “But I can not see someone for six years and just pick up where we left off.”
Still, a decade in LA has happened more by accident than by design for the Bakers. “We stayed for a year and then it just came to a point where it was going to be harder to pack up and go back to Australia. It would be more unsettling, as well as going back to an industry that has less and less opportunities,” he says.
These days, even visits home are not that frequent. “We don't get back [to Australia] as much as we would like. We don't have a house there any more and, with three kids to organise, it makes it quite a production to travel.”
So does LA now feel more like home? “That's a difficult question,” he says, as he toys with his eggs. 'I suppose the kids feel like it's home, because the boys have been here all their life and Stella [Baker's oldest daughter] has been here for most of her life. But I still find myself punctuating conversations with, 'If we're still here then.' I don't know... I guess at some point you have to submit and say yes. Otherwise it feels like you've spent 10 years in no man's land. I guess you could say we're reasonably settled.”
I wonder if he feels as though LA is a good place to raise his kids. “I think that's all relative to what relationship you have with your kids and how they feel about themselves,” he says. “I think we feel we have a responsibility to give them a world view, which is something that is lacking in this country”
It was mainly for his family's security that Baker took the job as Nick Fallin in The Guardian, a role he was initially reluctant to accept, mainly due to the relentless grind of filming a TV series.
“To be honest,” he says, as he wrestles with a bottle of tomato sauce, “a lot of choices and decisions I had to make were influenced by having a family to support. The decision to do the show was made after constantly being at the end of a shoestring and not knowing where I was headed. That's exciting when you're young, but when your kids are starting to get to school age, I felt a sense of responsibility. I did the TV show to have something solid.”
Baker says the show did provide him with a much-needed confidence boost. He'd never formally trained as an actor and early work in Australia like appearing in Drumsticks ice-cream commercials and dancing in Mehssa Tkautz's 'Read My Lips' music video probably don't count. “Doing the series was a way of overcoming my inferiority complex of not going to drama school. I could make a shitload of money and get on-the job training. I ended up doing 70 hours of television over three years. It's hard to beat that kind of experience.”
Baker soon became hooked on the security of the work and, now that it's all over (The Guardian was cancelled last year), he again faces the challenges of the unknown. “The problem is, you get used to earning good money and having regular employment - it's ridiculous how hard that habit is to break. And when you're thrust out there again, and you have five mouths to feed and your family has grown accustomed to a certain standard of living, then you really can feel like shit.”
Not that he has to worry; he already has three back-to-back films, including the highly anticipated sequel to the mega successful and wonderfully creepy thriller, The Ring. The Ring 2 has Naomi Watts reprising her role as the terrorised newspaper journalist and young mother. This time around she has relocated with her son to a sleepy Oregon town and is working on the local paper, while Baker plays a fellow reporter drawn into the horror. “I get very defensive about the film because people assume that because Naomi is a close personal mate, that's how I got the job. I had to jump through hoops to get the part, just like any other actor in this town,” he says. “Naomi assures me she had nothing to do with it and I believe her, because I had to go through so many readings and auditions. I think I spent more time auditioning than I did shooting the film.”
After The Ring 2 Baker shot a zombie movie in Canada called Land of the Dead for famed horror film director George Romero and he's just about to start shooting an inter-racial romance called 42.4 Percent. “When I go home today I have to rehearse with my co-star,” he says, jokingly. (Baker's meeting his on-screen canine companion.) “My character has a pivotal relationship with his dog, so they're bringing him over to bond with me.” (The Bakers recently got their own dog, an eight-month-old cocker spaniel, whom he says the kids adore.)
But even with all this work, the actor admits he's still insecure about the future. “Well, it's not really a permanent job, is it?” he says. “I don't really have that galvanised self-confidence to be an actor.”
The very down-to-earth Baker is unlikely to be found power-lunching in Beverly Hills - it's not his scene. “I love acting, but the politics and the business of it I'm not good at. I've always been someone who likes to sit on the sidelines. I never feel like going head-long into it, which probably reflects in my career,” he says. “It's my nature. I keep things at an arm's length all the time.”
“I'm really crap at selling myself,” he continues. “I don't play that whole game - I don't have the DNA to really sell myself or hype myself and when I do I make such an arse of myself then I'm full of self-loathing. I start to think, 'What am I doing?' I feel like some cheap hooker.'
It seems strange for a highly successful actor to have an outlook that seems so negative. “Yeah, I often think that myself,” he admits. “I always have this feeling that the river is going to run dry sooner or later and everyone is going to realise that I'm really not that good, and I'm always thinking what else I could do instead.”
Has he thought about an alternate career? He considers himself quite the handyman around the house, but his wife brings him straight back to earth. “She points out that I'm such an actor that suddenly I'm playing Simon the yard worker. When she said that, it kind of shattered me, but I guess it's kind of true; role-playing is so inherent in me.”
But one role that does come naturally is husband and dad. He met Rigg when he was just 22 and their daughter Stella, now 1, was born, as Baker likes to point out, “when I was eight days into being 24'. He was a young dad. “I guess it sounds young these days,” he dismisses. “But it did hurtle me down the track a little quickly, and got me out of my self-indulgent 20s pretty fast.'
Grounding himself in family so young is not surprising considering his childhood was so erratic. Born in Tasmania, his mother was a teacher and his father a caretaker. But they split when he was two and his mother married a butcher named Tom Denny (hence Baker's first acting moniker as Simon Baker-Denny). The family then moved to Lennox Head, near Byron Bay, but that marriage ended as well (Baker has an older sister and three young half-siblings). While he's reluctant to discuss his early life, he admits softly that his kids at least have something “a lot better than what I had when I was growing up”.
At which point a cherubic face presses up against the window. It's one of the Baker boys, Harry (Rigg has taken the boys out onto the sand to play, but they're breaking away to make faces at their dad through the glass.)
It prompts an unusual admission from Baker. “My biggest fear is dying in a car accident. I don't ever want to die in transit, I want to be somewhere,” he reflects. But surely acting is a transitory profession? “But for me what's important is making breakfast with the kids, having a game of backgammon on a Saturday afternoon with friends, they're the moments, the foundation I want my life to be built on, not the shifting sands of popular opinion or box-office receipts.”
As I watch Baker leave, he strolls outside and gives Rebecca a long hug, as though he's just returned from an extended trip. His boys soon gather around and hug his legs. It's a picture of family bliss that could bring a tear to your eye, and it recalls one of the things Baker said to me: “At the end of the day, you just want to have a laugh, right? Be happy with yourself and loved by your family.”
That Fabulous Baker Boy EXCLUSIVE Simon Baker/Book of Love, The Guardian Interview by Paul Fischer at the Sundance Film Festival.
It was the world premiere of Aussie actor Simon Baker's latest film, Book of Love, co-starring fellow Australian Frances O'Connor. At the Sundance Film Festival, Baker was present with his wife of 12 years, Rebecca Rigg. As we chat in a Park City hotel room, the actor says that Rebecca still remains his harshest critic. "My wife is an incredibly good gauge for me, because of that."
Book of Love is an unflinchingly honest portrait of a marriage in crisis, and involves some very intimate moments with co-star O'Connor. One wonders how it feels to be sitting with one's wife, watching scenes of sexual intimacy. Baker pauses slightly. "It's really hard to watch anyone you know really well on screen and really get suspended. In Book of Love, I made my wife laugh and cry, and that moved me in itself. That means I did my job." While Book of Love deals with a marriage in crisis, no such crisis exists off screen for Baker. Now married to Rebecca for 12 years, and father of three, the actor says that they have survived "because we love each other." Yet Baker admits that it's not easy to put everything in perspective: the strong marriage, the family and of course the career. "This film says that any relationship is difficult and the ones that look the easiest from the outside, are often hardest from the inside," Baker concedes.
Baker says there was no question why he was keen to play the infallible husband in Book of Love. "What's not to like about a character like this from an actor's perspective? It's such a great character." Nor did Baker have difficulty identifying with him. "I think every man can identify with him and that's what got ME. Mate, I'm in heaven with a character like that, because it's why I became an actor," Baker says. "It's a way to speak to people without sitting down and having a chat with everyone. It's a way to be able to speak to them and have people speak to themselves, try to question themselves and try to understand stuff. Films can be really powerful and don't HAVE to be massive extravaganzas. They can be incredibly personal. This character's a great arc and journey. It's probably the first time I can ever say that the character on the screen is exactly the way I was trying to do it."
Now star of the popular TV series The Guardian, Baker has resisted making big Hollywood movies, preferring, he says, to do what he wants to do, rather than what he NEEDS to do. "I make the money on the show, so that doesn't factor into it. I do a project like Book of Love because I want to", he says, matter-of-factly. "I'm not an actor because I have a need to see my name up in lights or because I want to be a multi-millionaire. I do it because I've got something in me that has to come out. Unfortunately, to get those opportunities, you have to have something."
Baker also concedes that he has to make some acting choices based on survival. "I have to balance art and commerce. I am an artist, that's who I am, and everything I do, whether it's a shit movie or whatever it is, I still try to do the best I c an and express whatever. But at the same time, I have a wife and three kids and I have to support them. I'm not in a position where I can dance around all over the globe."
Baker honestly admits that he agreed to do The Guardian for very pragmatic reasons. "It was like, fuck mate, you've got kids, you're an actor, and if you're not in that top tier, living like a king, you're a gypsy and all over the place, never knowing where your next pay cheque's coming from. Not only that, you're always going to be pulled away all over the place away from your family. I did The Guardian for a sense of stability in my life."
Now in its third season, Baker surprisingly admits that he has no idea whether the show has been picked up for a fourth, or indeed, how it is even rating. "I don't even look at that stuff anymore, because it's got nothing the fuck to do with me. I either enjoy the work or I don't, and if I do an episode I'll get paid for it." Clearly, the actor is "I have ups and downs with it, mainly because it's such a different system. I much prefer doing the work as I did with Book of Love, because it's more creative freedom and not filtered by what affiliates or studio executives that are all involved in shaping what it is," Baker says. "What it is, is what it is and I can work in that medium and that's fine, but as an artist, I prefer Book of Love, because it enables me to be free."
For Baker, there's well and truly life after The Guardian. Rather than fame and fortune, the actor says he wants to do just good work, and be a good husband and dad.
Reality Bites in the Moral Maze of The Guardian The Guardian, a gritty series based on children's legal advocates and starring Simon Baker, opts for true-life resolutions rather than Hollywood's trite endings.
Nick Fallin, lawyer, works in hell. For those who haven't watched Ten's visceral moral thriller The Guardian, Fallin is serving 1500 hours of community service for a drug arrest. His punishment consists of using his legal smarts to protect children through the Children's Legal Service of Pittsburgh.
As a kind of “fallen” angel, Simon Baker's character has to negotiate his way through a never-ending moral quagmire in this under-funded area.
Even fans used to the claustrophobic and gritty atmosphere of this taut TV drama will find the new season's movie-length opener shocking. Fallin and his father, en route to a charity concert, beat up a man who takes their parking spot. The vicious father-son beating is another brave opener for the series that revels in showing us its characters' dark sides.
Baker, part of Australia's senior acting alumni, is in the right territory here. His expressive face conveys Nick's paradoxical character – this guy seems to want to do the right thing, but he gets caught in the moral cracks and shades of grey every time. And it's far more interesting watching a bad guy going good, than a good guy going bad.
“There is a longing to be a better person and lead a better, richer, fuller life. He's just not really capable of doing it,” Baker says of his character.
Dabney Coleman, as Nick's amoral lawyer father Burton Fallin, provides a great foil.
In the third-season opener, Nick is dealing – in his repressed fashion – with the aftermath of a friend's death. Simultaneously, his relationship is floundering; and he is working on a custody case involving a boy whose mother works as a snake-handler in a carnival. Her child has accused the carnival owner of abuse, and Fallin must resolve the situation.
It's the classic Guardian examination of outsiders and their difficulties in living in the real world. And, of course, in true dark-horse Guardian fashion, the issue doesn't get resolved.
“I thought I could walk a line with Nick, that I could make the character very internal, where he was not likeable but I could still make the audience root for him,” Baker says.
“There was this challenge: I thought I could play the sort of thing where you're hoping he makes the right choices and you feel for him when he makes the wrong choices.”
While some critics have attacked Baker's portrayal, he stands by his minimalist interpretation.
“I love the stoic nature. Growing up in Australia, I saw so many of those characters,” he says.
“You constantly reach down into your bag of tricks – and I don't mean that in a sense of cheap magic tricks. I mean you reach down into your bag of history and experience – and that can be cathartic.
“Not always, not every day and not every line, but when it is, it can also be difficult and painful.”
This decision to let Nick Fallin make the wrong choices, and the writer's refusal to provide upbeat endings, has left some long-term fans complaining that The Guardian is too relentlessly dark.
But that morally ambiguous approach is true to series creator David Hollander's vision – that of a film-noir-influenced study of human flaws and frailties.
Overtly, it's about the contrast between lawyers who work for the community and ones who go for the corporate dollar. Fallin works in both worlds (clocking up the requisite hours at his father's firm and for troubled children in court).
“I remember going to a halfway house with my brother in Denver a few years ago, and watching him talk to the kids there,” says Hollander.
“There was this one kid who was 16 years old and in and out of trouble. He'd had a brush with the law and was lying to my brother about what he'd done. It's one of those things where we feel badly for him, yet we fear him.
“He and others struck me as being such an interesting collection of victims and victimisers – and victims on their way to becoming victimisers. It was powerful. When I saw them, I thought, this is the kind of character I want to write about.”
It's also the kind of character that has seen the series become a stealthy kind of hit. It's the type of show that many people watch, but many don't talk about. It has a huge Internet fan base, and is a forum – or a kind of dramatic springboard – for discussing moral issues without clear-cut guidelines. These are the same kind of issues many of us face.
“The kinds of stories we're telling depict a certain kind of human helplessness,” Hollander says.
“It's about doing our best under difficult circumstances and not always prevailing.”
Which sounds like the best definition of heroism going, when you think about it.
The Fabulous Baker Boy “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, but the sudden, indignant silence is worth a million words. Assuming they'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 the 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 articulate. 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?”
Expats – Simon Baker “I left Sydney for LA when I was 26 because I wanted to expand my horizons. It was an adventure. You see, when I first came here from Ballina, Sydney seemed massive. But after a while it started to feel very small. And when you're young, you crave broader horizons like a drug. At first, Sydney was a big hit. I still remember driving over the bridge in my Torana for the first time. I was in the far lane, where it narrows, just shitting my pants. The bridge just felt so massive. You long for that sort of excitement again, and that's what sort of took me out of here to LA.
“But I really miss Sydney when I'm away. The last time I was back was last year, just for a day! I spent it in the back bar of the Woollahra Hotel, playing pool with an old mate. Then we watched the footy. I love Woollahra. It's got beautiful streets. It's got an old-fashioned Australian village community feeling I really like.
“When we [myself and wife Rebecca] came back this time we stayed a while at the Park Hyatt because we just had a longing to be on the harbour, to experience the beauty of the city Sydney is a ridiculously pretty city, stunningly beautiful. I mean, when you arrive back in LA after being in Sydney, it's just so depressing. As soon as you're off the plane and driving through LA ... it's like endless Parramatta Roads, Parramatta Road multiplied.
“It's very hard to do anything in LA without comparing it to Sydney. For one thing, the food in Sydney is ridiculous, beyond compare, really. When we go to dinner with Americans it's just pathetic how much we talk about how great our city's food is. And I just can't eat seafood in America. I just can't; won't! Even if it's a seafood restaurant, it's just like chewing on rubber. And you can't get a coffee over there. When I order a coffee over there, I get a texta and mark the cup like: 'I want coffee to here, and I want milk to here'.
“Americans aren't that familiar with Sydney. They talk about the Opera House, the bridge, the New Year's celebrations. People will say: 'Oh my Gaaaad, I went to Sydney and it was fantaaaaastic. We stayed at Daarling Harrrbourrrrrr'. And I'll say: 'I'm sorry but you stayed in the worst place'. I haven't been there [Darling Harbour] for seven years, but I see Darling Harbour as the pimple on the arse of Sydney.
“I like the old Sydney, the little pockets. When I was first acting in Sydney in the 1990s, there was a real sense of community, particular haunts where everyone from different places could sit around and chat. Places like the Tropicana cafe, or Goodbar (when it was still the Freezer), or Soho, at four in the morning, trying to chase that ball of fun, never catching it.
“Sydney used to be a little bit more low-rent. Every time I come back I've noticed that a lot of my friends who used to live in the eastern suburbs are spreading further out because they can't afford to live there any more; the old warehouses friends used to live in are now redevelopments.
“I think it's hard to explain what an experience of Sydney can be unless you've lived here for a while, and know how to take advantage of it. Everyone I know takes Sydney for granted. But if you live overseas for a few years, you realise how good everyone has it in this city. There's a reason why the cost of living here is going through the roof.
“The urge to return is just in me. I've moved around a lot in my life - Tasmania, New Guinea, St Marys in the western suburbs, Ballina - but Sydney's our city. We've been in LA a long enough time. My kids are surrounded by American kids, they speak with American accents. I don't know whether it's my own shit, my own baggage, but I want to bring them up here. And I think there's something to be said about our values. Sydney has a straightforward approach to it. There's nothing more comforting than going to Glenmore Road School [Paddington] and hearing the headmistress say: 'Stevie, sit up. I'll have that ball, thank you.' There's a warm discipline there that's so comforting. In California it's more like: 'OK now, Steven, tell us why you got upset. How did that make you feel?'
“We will get back here. But I'm on this television show [The Guardian], everything's great, there's 12 million people watching every week and it's wonderful for my career. But it's also like, 'Now I'm done. I want to come back'. So, I'm kind of stuck there, in a sense, but longing more to be back. Still, my daughter's booked into school [in Sydney], so we have to be back for that.
“As I've got older, I've started to crave the familiar, have more respect for the simplicity of the lifestyle you can have in this city the sense of community. This is a pretty great city where you can sit in the pub and have a beer next to a guy who makes millions, while the guy on the other side is on the f—ing dole queue, and you can all still have a conversation. I hope that continues. We've just got to get rid of Johnny Howard.”
Simon Says
Perched on a stool in the smoky back bar of Sydney's Woollahra Hotel, actor Simon Baker is right now the guardian of some amber fluid and a classic Aussie mouthful. “I miss meat pies – they don't have them in LA. Actually, all I think about the whole time I'm in America is what I'm missing out on in Australia,” says the Los Angeles-based star of TV's The Guardian, holidaying in Sydney with his wife, actress Rebecca Rigg, and their three children. “I miss sitting in friends' lounge rooms watching the footy, surfing with mates and going to the pub for a beer and a game of pool. I don't get any of that in LA.”
So Baker is a little nostalgic for his homeland – he and Rigg are even looking to buy a home in Sydney's east – but for now the boy from Ballina, NSW, is happy to have a foot here and one firmly placed in Hollywood. The actor, 33, has signed on as the brooding Nick Fallin for a third series of The Guardian (series two wraps on Network Ten on July 9) and has had the opportunity to direct an episode. When Guardian creator David Hollander offered him the chair, “I was nervous,” says Baker. “My wife said, 'What are you afraid of? You can do it on your ear.'” The episode, “My Aim is True”, airs in Australia on June 4, and “I didn't fall on my face,” says Baker.
But before he slips back into Nick's slick suit in August, Baker will head to New York to star in the movie drama Nights in Phnom Penh, opposite Australian actress Frances O'Connor. It means time away from Rigg, 35, who will stay in Sydney with Stella, 9, Claude, 4, and Harry, 1. “We try to infuse a little bit of Australian culture into them while we're here but also try not to overdo it,” he says. Film roles such as this and The Affair of the Necklace opposite Hilary Swank mean Baker knows he's reached a point in his career where there are more options. And, importantly, good ones. “I've always had a my own issues with quality. I've always had a chip on my shoulder because I started out in soap opera.”
It's true that E Street and Home and Away made Simon Baker-Denny (he dropped the Denny in the late '90s) a household name. Ready to take on dramatic roles, he found they weren't on offer. “Unfortunately, Simon was tarred with the soapie brush early on in his career,” says Ned Kelly director and Baker's old surfing mate Gregor Jordan. “I think Simon suffered from the same thing Guy Pearce suffered. People got to know them via a soap and people then think they are a certain kind of actor,” says Jordon, adding that, ironically, the experience that Pearce, Baker and even ex-Neighbour Russell Crowe garnered in soaps scored them roles in the Oscar-winning L.A. Confidential. “I met [Confidential director] Curtis Hanson the other week and he said it was fantastic having all these Australians in the film because they were so experienced but no-one knew who they were.”
Now Guardian fans in more than 40 countries have their eyes on Baker, who says there are many benefits to starring in a hit prime-time series. Being able to afford a family home, for instance. Baker and Rigg are now putting in a pool at the Malibu beach house they bought in 2003 – which is patriotically complete with gum trees, surfboards, a chook named May and, at times, expats and close friends Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts. “I've worked hard to get where I'm at,” says Baker. “I've finally come full circle.”
In 1995 the couple, who met in Sydney in 1991 and co-starred on E Street, packed up Stella and moved to LA, where Baker scored small television and film roles, including L.A. Confidential. They returned briefly to Australia the next year to be married on Rigg's family property outside Sydney (bridesmaid Naomi Watts ruined her dress by taking a dip in the lake). In 2001 The Guardian came calling.
“People always say I was an overnight success. No way! I've done nine movies – some of them were good and some of them were shit,” says Baker. “I've always had a family to support and bills to pay and people can look at my CV and go, 'I know why he did that.'” What Baker does next is finally up to him, but right now it's dinner and a movie with his wife. “I wouldn't be in this position, or anywhere near it, without her support and the sacrifices she has made,” says Baker of Rigg, who is waiting at the door. “I'm indebted to her.”
Fallin on his feet
He may not like his character but Simon Baker makes him work.
There was a striking symmetry when Simon Baker presented two of the big three awards on Logies night. Eleven years ago, Baker had been the recipient of the Most Popular New Talent award for his work on E Street. Now, he'd returned to the stage of Australian television's much-hyped night of nights as the golden boy made good, the star of the US drama series THE GUARDIAN, and as a high-profile celebrity guest.
Over the last decade, Baker has carved out the kind of career that many aspiring actors dream about. He started out in soaps (E STREET, HOME & AWAY, HEARTBREAK HIGH), then packed up his young family to take a chance on Tinseltown. His first role was a small but memorable one in the award-winning thriller, LA CONFIDENTIAL. After finding a foothold in the film industry, he also found favour with Leslie Moonves, the head of the CBS network, and was offered the lead in the Pittsburgh-based legal drama.
His perpetually troubled character, lawyer Nick Fallin, is now a familiar TV presence and the show is comfortably poised between its second and third seasons. Baker, who has also directed an episode in the second season, is even in a position to do a movie during the “hiatus”. And he had a pile of scripts to choose from.
The only one he's picked is a psychological thriller “about relationships and fidelity” by writer-director Alan Brown, who previously made a short film that was well-received at the Sundance Film Festival. It's not a big-budget, mainstream choice and it doesn't seem destined to become a box-office blockbuster. Which is part of the reason that Baker has chosen it.
“I read a lot of scripts during the year in the hope of being able to work on something during the hiatus, just to have something else to do creatively other than being that little prick, Nick Fallin,” Baker explains with disarming candour. “I'm drawn to stuff that is not necessarily commercial. I figure I work on commercial television, I don't need to do a big cheesy, commercial movie.”
Baker is clearly proud of the series in which he plays the title character, a hot-shot corporate lawyer and convicted drug offender who's ordered to serve out his sentence doing community service work in a child-advocacy office. But that doesn't mean he's not aware of the show's limitations, either for him as an actor or as a product of free-to-air network television.
“There's a certain standard that the show sets when we get it right, which is obviously not every episode,” he says. “But when all the elements come together the right way, we capture something that is rare on commercial network television in America. I'm excluding shows like THE SOPRANOS and SIX FEET UNDER which screen on HBO and don't have the restrictions that a show like ours has. We have to deal with Standards and Practices, advertisers and affiliate stations. We have to adhere to a five-act structure, with commercial breaks. On HBO, they have a subscription base, they have no limits, really, as to what they can do. We have to create stand-alone shows that can be played out-of-sequence.”
Created by David Hollander, THE GUARDIAN has both the top end of town and the grimy mean streets covered. Nick spends a part of his professional life in the offices of Fallin & Fallin, a powerhouse law firm he runs in partnership with his father, the venerable Burton (Dabney Coleman). There he deals with bullying CEOs and corporate takeovers. Then he grabs his expensive coat and natty briefcase and heads downtown to a desk in the less luxurious offices of Legal Services, where he battles to represent the interests of teenage incest victims, abused street kids and child prostitutes.
He's forced to straddle the two worlds and to deploy his street smarts, negotiating skills and courtroom wiles to best effect in both places. The price he pays is that, in these worlds of murky moralities, where law and justice might be very different things and where good intentions often don't result in great outcomes, there's a lot of heartache. THE GUARDIAN isn't a drama known for its sunny disposition: most of the time, life in Pittsburgh is pretty grim.
For Baker, the show might have a legal backdrop, but it's really about a father and son. “The core of it is this sort-of love story between the father and the son, how they're trying to have a relationship and they can't: they just can't communicate. That's something that's not necessarily spoken about in the show, but it's the core.
Baker thought from the time that he read Hollander's pilot script that he could do something interesting with Nick Fallin. Although his experience on a failed pilot, THE LAST BEST PLACE, in 1996, had soured him on the idea of working in television, things had changed. For starters, his wife, actor Rebecca Rigg, whom he'd met on the set of E STREET, was expecting their third child, so Baker was thinking of a more stable working life.
He'd made nine films, as various as MOST WANTED (1997), JUDAS KISS (1998), LOVE FROM GROUND ZERO (1998), RED PLANET (2000), and THE AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE (2001), but found that “every time I'd do a film, I'd come back and have to hit the pavement again and audition for other films. I didn't get the Hugh Jackman ride or the Heath Ledger ride: one movie and click. In America, it has so much to do with money. If you're involved in a film that makes a lot of money, suddenly you're a star. But you never know how a film's going to turn out when you're making it. You always hope for the best. People don't set out to make shitty movies. You do the best you can and you hope.”
While the prospect of pavement-pounding was unappealing, Baker had also noticed that there were interesting things happening in television: he thought that some of the recent series were better written that a lot of the movies he'd seen.
He was keen to give it a try: “I thought I could do something with the role that would probably be a lot different from what a lot of other actors in America would try to do with it,” he explains. What he was aiming to do was to follow in the footsteps of some of the Hollywood greats he'd admired, men such as William Holden, Gary Cooper, Steve McQueen and more recently Clint Eastwood. He wanted to create a quietly intriguing anti-hero.
“I love the way that those older guys were able to bring you into their world. You made a decision to join them on their journey. I was always a big fan of the old westerns and the films and television from the 70s: where the guy rode into town and didn't give anything away but let the audience in completely. He doesn't say a lot, he's very reactive. And then he gets his information and is very active.
“I thought I could walk a line with Nick, that I could make the character very internal where he wasn't likeable but the audience would still root for him. There was this challenge: I thought I could play this sort of thing where you're hoping he makes the right choices and you feel for him when he makes the wrong choices.”
Baker was also very clear about what he didn't want. He didn't want to play Nick Fallin large and loud: he didn't want one of those “look-at-me-ma-I'm emoting” performances that he regards disdainfully as “acting acting”.
“A lot of people got into this pattern, I think, in the 80s, where good acting was acting acting: really acting out, angry, emotional. And I just felt this longing to do something that was not so external. I was sick of watching this showing-off.”
But if part of Baker's inspiration came from his movie idols, from actors who, he says were masterful at conveying the impression that they'd really rather be somewhere else - and were all the more intriguing for it - he reckons that part of his inspiration also came from his cultural heritage.
“I love the stoic nature. Growing up in Australia, I saw so many of those people. You watch a football game in Australia and someone scores a try under the post and you don't see too much self-congratulatory behaviour. It's sort of, well, OK, put your head down, try not to smile.
“You're playing pool and you sink the black after sinking seven balls, and the other guy hasn't sunk a ball yet, and you put the black down with a tremendous shot, you don't go 'Yeah! and Tom Cruise-ify it. That, to me, is interesting. I think Russell Crowe played a South Sydney footballer in GLADIATOR. You know that shot where he runs on to the field? He was a bloody footballer going out for the Grand Final. For me, it was fantastic. I loved to see that. It's so Australian. I mean, c'mon, high-fives and all that crap? It's not our way.”
Baker, who returned to Sydney in 1999 to work on the telemovie SECRET MEN'S BUSINESS, believes that his Australian training also contributed to his on-set attitude. “You tend to collaborate more,” he observes. “It was something that I was blessed with, growing up as an actor working in Australia. We tend to discuss and share ideas. I also find that in Australia, when actors collaborate, they're not trying to do it for their own benefit, which is often a flaw with American actors: the vanity gets in the way of what they're actually there for.
“I'm very direct at work, I'm very honest and I'm very much about increasing the quality of the product, of strengthening the story, making it more interesting. It's not ever about me. I don't need to do that on the show: I am THE GUARDIAN. I actually want other people to have more screen time so that I can have a break sometimes.
When Baker says he's “direct”, he also means he has little patience for some of the hired-gun directors, “journeymen” who he thinks treat it like just another legal drama, who are oblivious to its father–son core and shoot their episodes accordingly.
“Sometimes we have directors who don't really look at the show properly. They think 'Oh, it's a legal show. This is a story about a hot-shot lawyer.' They think that's where all the drama is. But it's not necessarily about what's on the page: it's about what's going on underneath all of that.”
He was giving some of the hired help such a hard time that the producers offered him an episode to direct. “I had a ball,” he says flashing a sunny smile rarely seen on THE GUARDIAN. “It was so much fun, directing is a trip. I'm going to do a couple more next season. It feels more whole than acting. I know it sounds like a cliché: an actor who wants to direct, but I always did. I've always thought more like a director and when I worked with Ang Lee (on RIDE WITH THE DEVIL in 1999), Ang said to me, you should write and direct.'
“I can't write: I don't have the patience to write. But I like to take something that I read and visualise it and then put the pieces together. I like the craft of putting the pieces together. My episode is very tightly constructed, it joins together smoothly, it's not bang, bank, bang, choppy, choppy. That was fun for me, to be in control, instead of sitting there and going, 'Oh, that's a bit of an obvious choice, isn't it?'”
Reflecting on his career, Baker is a lot more measured than his agent might be. He doesn't see an inspiring tale of a boy from Down Under making good in Hollywood. “I've never, ever looked at this like, 'I'm on a hit TV series in America: I've made it.' I've never approached it like that. For me it's always been about the personal fulfilment in what I'm doing at the time.”
The episode of THE GUARDIAN directed by Simon Baker, “My Aim is True”, screens on Wednesday June 4 on Channel Ten at 8.30pm.
It's Mr Nice Guy
Success has been a slog but Simon Baker is now grateful, writes Robert Fidgeon.
Outwardly, he was returning home as one of the international headliners at the Logie Awards. But for The Guardian star Simon Baker, the visit carried far greater personal significance. It was the conclusion of an 11-year voyage of self-discovery.
“From my early TV days here I always had this sense of being second-rate. That what I was doing wasn't much good. That it was inferior,” says the former E Street star, who won the Most Popular New Talent Logie in 1992.
“To be honest, I had a chip on my shoulder. I found it difficult to accept a compliment.”
It's something that still doesn't sit easily with him. Aussie actor friends in America have tried to “teach” him how to accept praise graciously.
But it was buddy Nicole Kidman who took him aside and put it most succinctly. “Nic said to me: 'Simon, just learn to take a breath and say thank you',” he recalls.
“Which was one of the reasons I was excited about coming back to do the Logies.
“When I first started my career here, I was fortunate enough to be embraced by the industry, but I did everything I could as an angry young actor-man to get in the way of that.
“To be at the Logies this year and see the young actors coming through, I realised how great it was to have that support when you're young, even if I rejected it.”
The Launceston-born Baker was raised on the north coast of New South Wales by his mother and stepfather after his parents divorced.
At 17 he studied nursing in Sydney, but three years later was “accidentally” cast in a TV commercial and made his acting debut in E Street in 1991.
Short runs in Home and Away and Heartbreak High followed, before Baker, actor-wife Rebecca Rigg and baby daughter Stella headed for Hollywood in 1995.
With no agent, no job offer and barely $2000 between them, they saw it as nothing more than an “adventure”.
“We figured if the worst came to the worst, we always had the safety net of being able to come home.”
In 1997 he won a role in the movie hit LA Confidential, and almost three years ago signed to star as attorney Nick Fallin in The Guardian.
“People see LA Confidential as a breakthrough because it was successful, but often some of the most personally memorable films are the not-so-sucessful,” he says, pointing out that between LA Confidential and The Guardian he did eight films, which no one mentions.
“When I left Australia I was unemployed. Now I'm gainfully employed and fortunate to be working on something that's successful and of which I'm extremely proud.”
Baker, who recently directed his first episode of The Guardian, sees the show as a “dark, bleak program dressed up as a warm, sentimental drama”.
“But it's not really a legal drama. It's a show about relationships and the hope of harmony.
“Nick is a guy struggling with a cocaine problem, who has a very dysfunctional relationship with his father and a gutful of self-loathing.
“It's a challenge to get away with that on mainstream United States TV.”
But it's the fact that many in the US see Baker as an “overnight success” that brings a smile to the boyish handsome face.
“Truth is, I've worked damned hard over there for eight years.
“Was it an easy ride to get here? No. Was it a fairytale existence? No.
“It was a damned hard slog. At times, a really tough struggle. I wasn't here on my own. I've always had a family to support.
“So, in a practical sense, the greatest feeling that comes with being associated with a successful show is one of relief.”
Career connected to wife support
“She's always been amazing. I'm very lucky,” he says.
Baker recalls being approached at this year's Golden Globe Awards by the casting agent who selected him for the role in LA Confidential.
“She said one of the most complimentary things that has ever been said to me,” he says.
“She said how happy and proud she was that Rebecca and I were still together after all these years, enjoying the good times after battling through the tough times together.
“I felt really good about that because someone was recognising we had done it together.”
Along with eldest daughter Stella, Baker and Rigg have two sons, Claude and Harry.
“They're wonderful,” he says. “I couldn't ask for anything more.”
Simon says
How do you feel now compared to 10 years ago when you won the Most Popular New Talent Logie for your role in E Street?
Older, calmer and more relaxed... because I have a job! Also, I have a great family and a great support unit.
It's great to have you here again...
It's very touching to be her again, in a different capacity.
Do you feel proud to have started your career in Australian TV?
I feel proud to have come from this industry. It's responsible for a lot of international success.
What do you think of Aussie TV at the moment?
The quality of Australian TV at the moment is very high. I've checked all the shows out since I've been here, and there are some great young actors and talented older actors who are reinventing themselves.
What do the TV WEEK Logies mean to you?
It's great to get that pat on the back, if you just take it for what it is, and keep working at your craft. It's great to celebrate what we do.
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The beauty of the harbour, the unbeatable food, the straightforward approach. Matt Buchanan finds that, for this actor, Sydney does it best. Especially the coffee.
The Guardian star Simon Baker shuffles family life, a film career and a hot TV role. And for his next trick: directing
We pulled The Guardian star Simon Baker into a quiet spot at the TV WEEK Logies for a chat...