"But the beach gave me a place to go to figure out who I was." (Baker himself still surfs regularly.) "It feels like such a cliché," he says apologetically. His escape from these family complexities was the beach, where he was part of a close-knit circle of surfing mates. A second marriage (from which the name Denny came: Baker began acting as Simon Denny, then Simon Denny Baker) also ended, and Baker was out of contact with his biological father until adulthood. His parents' marriage ended when he was still a toddler and much of his childhood and teenage years were spent in Lennox Head, near Byron Bay. Along with his older sister (now a Melbourne GP) the family relocated to New Guinea when Baker was nine months old. Baker was born in Launceston, Tasmania his mother was a high school English teacher, his father a mechanic. It must have been odd growing up looking like this as a working-class boy on the NSW north coast. Simon Baker and wife Rebecca Rigg with daughter Stella and sons Harry, at left, and Claude, in Hollywood in 2013. On any other person this outfit would look totally unremarkable on him, he might be disappointed to hear, it looks like couture. Today he's wearing jeans, a casual shirt and chunky boots. Not that he seems to do much to cultivate such elegance perhaps, indeed, the reverse. You can see exactly why luxury brands such as Givenchy and Longines – not to mention ANZ – have hitched their wagons to his star. He also possesses that trait rare among men – and women, for that matter – of great natural elegance. In person, despite shaggy hair (which he once claimed to cut himself, "by feel") and a scruffy ginger beard, he has one of those slow smiles, involving laugh lines and white teeth, that really does light up a room. This may have something to do with the way he looks. But in Australia, as he himself says, he's always been a low-key, middle-of-the-firmament kind of star.Īnd yet, most people – certainly most women – know exactly who he is. So he's been big in the US, certainly, and even bigger in Europe, where The Mentalist is huge. For most of the past decade and a half, he's played two quiet, conflicted men, in two American TV crime series – The Mentalist, and before that, The Guardian. He's never starred in a huge box office hit he's done no edgy HBO series no major theatre. Credit: Nicolas Guerin/Contour by Gettyīaker is 45. And it's a bit hard to go, 'Actually, I've done 20-something films, I'm brilliant.' " Well, that's true. "Most people just identify me with The Mentalist, that show that's on Channel Nine sometimes. "But I'm not that big a star," he objects. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I try to point out. I never felt brash enough to bring it up: 'Oh yeah, I'll star in it, and produce it, and direct it.' " Yet here he is, doing all those things. this is why I never wanted to even suggest it. "God," he says, "how cheesy does that sound? I knew it would sound vain. He will also star in the film and co-produce it. Most of what he's worried about today is his first film as director – an adaptation of Tim Winton's lyrical, disturbing novel Breath. And though it's hard to imagine from someone who looks like the literal embodiment of every laid-back, blue-eyed surfer dream we've ever had, it seems as if this might not be an unusual state for him. He's sitting in a brightly lit restaurant on a sunny afternoon, hands on his knees, worrying about it – which makes a nice change in a celebrity. Simon Baker doesn't want to sound like an idiot.
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