Baker chills out – and gets hot
Simon Baker looks directly into the camera, using his hands to accentuate his words, the tips of his fingers drawing a square in the air. “Look at me. Look in my eyes,” he says almost seductively to Robin Tunney, the actress with whom he’s working through the scene.
“I’m looking,” Tunney coolly responds.
The episode’s director, tucked away in another room of the studio set, yells cut.
“Did I get it that time?” Baker said, laughing heartily while reverting to his native Australian accent. “I was trying to have a little bit of fun that time.”
The cast joins in the laughing. Baker, it seems, is finally having fun.
The 39-year-old actor who signed on for the role of Patrick Jane on CBS’ “The Mentalist” said he has spent too many years taking himself too seriously.
“I used to want to move people and let people identify with me as an actor, you know? But with this show, I just want to entertain people,” Baker said.
Until recently, Baker’s television success has been mixed, with a 2002 Golden Globe nomination for his work in the dour legal drama “The Guardian” and a blink-and-you-miss-it stint on the quickly axed 2006 heist caper “Smith.” But now he has a certified hit in “The Mentalist,” this season’s top-rated new series with an average 16.2 million viewers.
And Baker said he’s finally able to let his guard down as Jane, a charming, impulsive independent consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation and a former stage “mentalist,” or mind reader, who has an uncanny track record for solving crimes.
“You know what it is? Most of my friends were these snobby, highbrow things who would sit and go, ‘Oh, I didn’t really like that film. It’s pretentious, there’s no substance.’ So I grew up in my early acting years around that kind of environment. I had a governor in my own head, ‘Bah! Big studio movies – I’m not interested,’ ” Baker said.
“I just needed to lighten up a little bit and have fun with it, stop taking myself so seriously,” he said. “By all means, take the work seriously, but have fun doing it. And laugh at yourself. It’s been somewhat liberating.”
Baker is probably best-known for his film work. In 1995, he moved his family to Los Angeles, where he had a small role in the Academy Award-winning “L.A. Confidential.” That was followed by more notable roles in 2000’s sci-fi flick “Red Planet,” then opposite Sanaa Lathan in “Something New” and Anne Hathaway in “The Devil Wears Prada,” both in 2006.
The character he takes on in “The Mentalist” worked for him because he “reads people, (and) he doesn’t use anything spooky or wooky. He’s just straight-up a guy who’s a bit of a con man himself, and he’s able to gauge people. I love that,” Baker said.
The birthday bunch
Singer Gordon Lightfoot is 70. Movie director Martin Scorsese is 66. Actress Lauren Hutton is 65. “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels is 64. Actor-director Danny DeVito is 64. Actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is 50. Entertainer RuPaul is 48. Actor Dylan Walsh (“Nip/Tuck”) is 45. Actress-model Daisy Fuentes is 42. Actress Sophie Marceau (“Braveheart”) is 42. Actress Rachel McAdams (“Wedding Crashers”) is 30.