Carroll Baker

Acting

Born May 28, 1931

From Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA

Carroll Baker (born May 28, 1931) is a former American actress who has enjoyed popularity as both a serious dramatic actress and, particularly in the 1960s, as a movie sex symbol. After studying under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, Baker began performing on Broadway in 1954. From there, she was recruited by director Elia Kazan to play the lead in the adaptation of two Tennessee Williams plays into the film Baby Doll in 1956. In the mid-1960s, as a contract player for Paramount Pictures, Baker became a sex symbol after appearing as a hedonistic widow in The Carpetbaggers (1964). The film's producer, Joseph E. Levine, cast her in Sylvia before giving her the role of Jean Harlow in the biopic Harlow (1965). Despite significant prepublicity, Harlow was a critical failure, and Baker relocated to Italy in 1966 amid a legal dispute over her contract with Paramount and Levine's overseeing of her career. In Europe, she spent the next 10 years starring in hard-edged giallo and horror films, including Romolo Guerrieri's The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968), a series of four films with Umberto Lenzi beginning with Orgasmo (1969) and ending with Knife of Ice (1972), and Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga (1973). Baker appeared in supporting roles in several acclaimed dramas in the 1980s, including the drama Star 80 (1983) as the mother of murder victim Dorothy Stratten, and the racial drama Native Son (1986), based on the novel by Richard Wright. Through the 1990s Baker had guest roles in several television series, such as Murder, She Wrote; L.A. Law, and Roswell. She formally retired from acting in 2003.

Carroll Baker

Known For

The Game

Giant

The Big Country

The Greatest Story Ever Told

How the West Was Won

The Private Lesson

Kindergarten Cop

Ironweed

Star 80

Cheyenne Autumn

Filmography — Acting

The Game

Giant

The Big Country

The Greatest Story Ever Told

How the West Was Won

The Private Lesson

Kindergarten Cop

Ironweed

Star 80

Cheyenne Autumn

Baby Doll

Bad

Confessions of a Frustrated Housewife

Station Six-Sahara

The Watcher in the Woods

The Carpetbaggers

Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil

Harlow

Captain Apache

Tennessee Williams: Orpheus of the American Stage

Sylvia

Valentina... The Virgin Wife

Big Guns Talk: The Story of the Western

Paranoia

Something Wild

Baba Yaga

Nowhere to Go

The Sky is Falling

Red Monarch

Cyclone

You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story

Bridge to the Sun

Native Son

Lionpower from MGM

Men Don't Tell

Skeletons

Knife of Ice

So Sweet... So Perverse

James Dean: The First American Teenager

Another Woman's Husband

Judgment Day: The John List Story

Cyber Eden

Return to 'Giant'

Roger Moore: A Matter of Class

A Quiet Place to Kill

The Fourth Victim

Easy to Love

Hollywood Uncensored

The Miracle

Blackmail Chase

Just Your Luck

But Not for Me

Heart of the Festival

Blonde Fist

Dalva

A Kiss to Die For

On Fire

The Harem

Time Machine: When Cowboys Were King

The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud

The Sweet Body of Deborah

Heart Full of Rain

In the Flesh

The Body

North Shore Fish

Cinerama Adventure

Rag and Bone