TVGuide November 2008

 

Simon Baker is on all fours, sniffing for clues. Literally. As The Mentalist's unconventional investigator Patrick Jane, the 39-year-old Australian actor often has to stick his nose—the manly schnozz that
saves his twinkly blue eyes and killer smile from making him a tad too handsome—exactly where it doesn't belong. Today, he's stuck it right into the palm of a bloodied, dismembered hand.

"It smells like almond moisturizer and tobacco," he announces. (Episode 106 Red Handed)

Relax. That hand is as phony as Jane's old gig: conning folks into believing he could speak to the dead. It's the opening scene of an episode in which Jane and the team from the California Bureau of
Investigation have to figure out how a man's hand ended up on a desert highway near the California-Nevada border.

In reality, the cast and crew are in arid Palmdale, some 60 miles northeast of Los Angeles, and there's a sandstorm brewing. Slipping on his horn-rimmed specs between takes (he's nearsighted), Baker describes today's acting challenge: "It's like talking on the back of a motorcycle with a helmet on—the wind is so strong that the dead man's hand is waving at me."

Critics and audiences greeted The Mentalist and Baker with high fives since its September premiere and turned it into the season's only new series to crack the Top 10. "It's the kind of show people want to watch in hard times like this," creator Bruno Heller says. "One where the bad guys are going to get caught." And even though the often-cocky hero is a master manipulator seeking revenge and redemption for the murder of his own wife and daughter, Jane is an intriguingly uplifting character.
"He carries tragedy on his back," says Heller, "but it's important to understand that when he is being mischievous, that's a positive affirmation of life."

It's a role that requires the kind of natural charisma that just can't be faked, and Baker has it in spades. "We were looking for a Cary Grant, and Simon was top of the list," says Heller. "People like to be in his presence, and the success the show has had so far is because of that. He's the team leader, but he doesn't put on airs."

Today, at this rather unglamorous location, Baker, a veteran of two other CBS dramas, The Guardian (2001–2004) and 2006's short-lived Smith, bears out Heller's opinion. After spending hours examining the hand in the middle of a hot, dusty road, he sits under a canopy with the rest of the cast and crew, a loopy grin on his movie-star-worthy mug. "My life is pretty hectic, but I'm really into it," he says. "Here's the weirdest part: I am a devil and I finally found a role where I get paid to be a devil. People ask me, 'How's it going, mate?' Are you f---ing kidding me? I'm having a ball! If I died tomorrow, I'd die a happy man."

Those devilish tendencies even extend to chitchat between scenes. As he and Robin Tunney, who plays the tough CBI leader Teresa Lisbon, wait for the cameras to set up, Baker regales her with a dubious tale about how Willem Dafoe allegedly had a "penis wrangler" on hand when he played
Jesus in "The Last Temptation of Christ" to make sure that all of Dafoe's legendary manhood stayed in his loincloth.

Tunney looks up from her Blackberry with the exact look of disbelief that often flashes across the face of her character. "It's true," Baker says. "I heard it from a makeup man who worked on the film."

A week later, Baker is back at the Warner Bros. lot The Mentalist calls home. It's 5pm—lunchtime in TV land—and he's in his trailer digging into a grilled chicken salad. "Can I get you anything?" he asks.
"I feel a little rude sitting here chowing down. Normally I'd be sleeping. Maybe I can lie down on the couch after I've eaten and pretend this is therapy."

Sounds like a plan, except that Baker isn't one of those actors who likes to go on and on about his childhood. Still, there are facts to be gleaned: Simon Baker was born July 30, 1969, in Tasmania, an island south of Australia that was also the birthplace of Errol Flynn. His parents separated when he was a toddler and Baker and his older sister moved to Lennox Head, on Australia's southeast coast, with his mum and step-dad, who had a son of their own.

There were other half siblings on Baker's father's side, but it was hardly The Brady Bunch. "More like the plot of a bad B movie," admits Baker, who had problems with his step-dad and didn't see his biological father again until he was 18.

Growing up by the beach was idyllic for a kid who started surfing at 7, even in a community where there were six guys to every girl. "There was some pretty savage chest-thumping," he recalls. "I had my share of fights. I used to try to talk my way out of it with logic, and they'd just get confused and punch me."

Although Baker identified with surfers, he hung out with everyone at school: the science nerds, the cigarette-smoking toughs and, of course, the girls. "They used to call me Ping Pong Ball, because I bounced around a lot." He was "moderately intelligent," but not a good student. "I was sportistic," Baker says, describing his form of ADD. "I couldn't pay attention in class because all I thought about was sports."

He started acting for an audience of one. "I would skateboard down the driveway and there was a little bump and occasionally when my mum was at the kitchen window, I'd do a fake-all and lie there on the ground until she'd start screaming." He pauses and grins. "It was a childish, negative way to get attention, and it worked."

When asked about his first professional gig, Baker plops down on the trailer floor and re-enacts his role as "the Triple-Choc kid" in a commercial for ice-cream cones. "I sat there twiddling a drumstick in
one hand and eating ice cream with the other. They gave me a spit bucket, but I didn't use it," he recalls. "I thought, 'Are you kidding me? I'm eating this!'"

In his early twenties, Baker met his future wife, Actress Rebecca Rigg, and was soon co-starring with her in an Aussie soap called E Street. A few years later, the Bakers, now with infant daughter Stella in tow, split for Hollywood. "We had enough money to eat for about two months," Baker recalls.
Fortunately, he quickly nabbed a small role in 1997's Oscar-nominated "L.A. Confidential." They put down roots in Malibu—"I've got to live near the coast," Baker says—and added two sons to their family (Claude, 9, and Harry,7).

Although they hung out with other "old-school" Aussies, including Nicole Kidman and "this little girl named Naomi Watts who could barely get arrested," the Bakers yearned to return to their homeland. So a few years ago, they bought a house in Australia. "But I never unpacked my suitcase," says Baker, who found himself working nonstop on TV and in movies like "Something New" and "the
Devil Wears Prada." Eventually, the message was clear: Hollywood could use Simon Baker.

He does not find it particularly difficult raising a family in L.A. "I try to be genuine, straightforward and honest with my kids, and I believe that nothing beats good old-fashioned hard work."

In The Mentalist , Jane often bonds with children involved in the cases. "The connection Jane has with kids is a kinship," he explains. "It's games, it's play, and that's what separates Jane from his emotions. He keeps himself off the bottom with the joy of entertaining and being childlike."

Looking around Baker's trailer, it seems like an appropriate time to channel the Mentalist's keen powers of observation. So: The exercise ball and an incline board imply that he's a fitness freak"
"No one has time to use it," he says dismissively. On the bulletin board, a photo of a flashy sports car is pinned in a prominent position. " A Citroen DS 21," Baker says excitedly of Jane's car, which viewers still haven't seen. "I just didn't see my character in brand-new car - he's always catching rides with other people because his car is in the shop. But," he adds insistently, "I will get to drive it."

OK then, what's with the playing card dangling from a curtain with a clothespin? "One day the lighting department clipped that to the front fork of my bike so it makes a v-r-r-r-r-r sound when I ride."

Perhaps he's not as observant as his doppelganger. Upon closer inspection, the card turns out to be appropriate for Patrick Jane and Simon Baker. That's right : the Joker.