The Australian 14Aug2010

A VIOLENT, R-rated film with misogynistic overtones may seem an odd fit for Simon Baker. As a result of his lead role in popular TV series The Mentalist, and the fact he is "ridiculously handsome" and known as a good bloke, Baker has as high a profile in the US as Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts and Hugh Jackman.

Photographers follow him and his family, and the public loves him. He's frequently on the big talk shows, where his relaxed attitude and humour stand out among the Botoxed faces and stage-managed personalities. He's relaxed, yes, but not rough around the edges, and he would never throw a telephone.

He's been on the requisite "most sexy" magazine lists, while his personal style -- sharp suits and big spectacles -- is noted by fashionistas. His television work has gained him nominations for best actor at the Emmys, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards.

For someone with this CV the explicit, controversial Michael Winterbottom film The Killer Inside Me is certainly a change of pace: critics have described it as depraved, repellent, reprehensible and cold. Baker, however, was drawn to it because it is "bold cinema".
Baker, who has just turned 41, is speaking from Los Angeles, where he has just finished another day on the set of The Mentalist, and although his voice is strained and a touch croaky, after 14 years in the US his accent is still pure Aussie and he is as genial as ever. He acknowledges his cinema work has received far less attention than his TV show.

"I've been in 15 or 16 films, but no one remembers them," he says with a laugh. "Most people know me for The Mentalist, which reaches more sets of eyeballs per week than any film I've ever made."

He's not being entirely accurate. We do recall The Devil Wears Prada, where he played a writer with a yen for the leading lady, played by Anne Hathaway. In his first American role he was memorable as a doomed gay actor in L.A. Confidential (1997), Curtis Hanson's Academy Award-winning slice of Hollywood noir. Now there's the contentious The Killer Inside Me, based on the novel by Jim Thompson.

Set in a small town in the Texas oilfields in the 1950s, the film is narrated by a softly spoken, polite young sheriff (Casey Affleck), who is soon revealed to be a cold-blooded killer. Baker plays the district attorney, one of the townspeople increasingly suspicious of their mild-mannered officer of the law after a vicious double murder.

The film opened this year's Sundance Festival and polarised the audience. While some praised its intensity, others were repelled by the depictions of stomach-churning brutality towards the characters played by Jessica Alba (the hooker) and Kate Hudson (the good girl). Winterbottom defended his film, saying murder and noir go hand in hand. "There's violence in the book, and there's violence in the film," he said.

"Were you affronted by it, insulted, appalled?" Baker jumps in as soon as The Killer Inside Me comes up in our conversation (his character has no part in the violence). "I always knew it was going to be a challenging film," he says. "If you read the book, you see that. Michael didn't shy away from it in any way. I think shying away would show you are trying to take advantage of it. What I like about it is the fact that there are still some people out there who are prepared to make bold cinema, which is diminishing."

The film was made in a small town in Oklahoma and the whole town turned out to see the stars. But the crowds particularly loved Baker. "They waited outside all night, and it was cold, until 3am when we wrapped," he said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. "So I spent the rest of the night having my photo taken with everyone and their grandmother."

Playing a leading character in a television series is a huge commitment. The old joke is that in LA everyone goes to bed at 9pm, and it's true. For those lucky enough to have it, a starring role means early starts and long days. The Mentalist is in production from July to mid-April, shooting 23 hours of television in that period, with two weeks off at Christmas. It takes eight days to make an episode, while seven shows are simultaneously in various stages, from treatment to shooting and post-production. And Baker is a family man too, long married -- to Australian actress Rebecca Rigg -- and with three children, Stella, Claude and Harry. That doesn't leave much time to pursue film roles.

"I try to find something that I feel is going to stimulate me in a different way. Working on The Mentalist is enjoyable, but challenging because of the sheer volume of the work. You turn around episode after episode, it keeps coming at you."

He's not complaining, mind. When Baker and Rigg came to the US in the mid-90s it was at the behest of some of the couple's actor friends, including Kidman, who were already working steadily and enjoying success. "I didn't come over here with expectations that I'm going to become a household name or a big star. It was more out of a sense of adventure. We felt we'd go see what happened, but we literally expected to run out of money in a month and go home."

Some of Baker's other actor friends were suspicious about the lure of Hollywood. "They were like, 'Yeah, not for me, not for me.' And while I understood, I've always been one to give it a shot. I don't want to sit there when I'm old and go, 'F. . . I really should have given that a shot, because who knows what could have happened?' "

Baker spent most of his youth at Lennox Head on the NSW north coast. He surfed, played water polo and kept his ambitions under the radar. "It was a country town. I was torn; torn between being one of the guys and being into the role-play thing. Did I want to be an actor? I secretly did, but I made a decision not to tell anyone about it."

He was understudy for Oliver Twist in the school musical but, disappointingly for young Simon, the star remained in tip-top health. And he was only in one school play. "I grew up with that thing of 'Are you one of the boys or do you like to hang with the chicks?' And to be honest I found the women, well girls, in my teenage years, a lot more interesting."

His interest in acting slowly emerged after he moved to Sydney. "For a lot of people, when you leave the town you grew up in, particularly a small town, you start to discover, listen and think more about what you want to do with your life and less about what your peers wanted."

Fortuitously, Baker was pulling beer in the Regent Hotel in the Sydney suburb of Kingsford, just down the road from NIDA. He met some of the school's acting students who worked in the bottle shop. "I used to talk to one in particular -- we're still friends -- and I think it took me about eight months to admit I'd like to go there, audition, and so on. But I was still shy about it all and I never got around to doing anything. I ran into him some years later when we were both working on soapies. That was pretty funny."

His first role -- outside of ice-cream commercials and as dancing eye candy in music videos -- was in the popular soap E Street. The producer's wife took one look at the handsome young man and suggested he audition. It went so well they offered him a regular role. "Ah, the early 90s," Baker says with a laugh. The music videos were dance songs, including fellow E Street-er Melissa Tkautz's cheesy hit Read My Lips. "They pop up on talk shows these days, as a form of sheer humiliation," he says. "Yeah, it's my past. What can I do? That was me and everyone gets a start somewhere."

Baker (who was known for a time as Simon Denny and Simon Baker Denny) also had a new wife and a baby. "I had a gig. The only problem was I didn't know what the f . . . I was doing," he says. He enrolled in some short-course acting classes but never really took to the Method. "It was weird. I found some of it interesting, and some of it cruel and unusual. I really believe that there is no wrong or right way of going about acting, particularly with acting on film. But I was often surprised by how cruel the teachers were to the students."

Instead, he played on his instincts and learned as he went along, winning the Logie for best new talent in 1993 and serving out his apprenticeship in soaps Home and Away and Heartbreak High.
Baker plans to return to his home turf for Breath, adapted from the Tim Winton book that won the Miles Franklin award last year. "It's an Australian book, an Australian film, an Australian story. If there's ever a film that I have to try to make it's going to be this one," he says. Baker will produce and play one of the lead roles.

The novel is a coming-of-age story set in a small town in Western Australia, where two teenage boys take up surfing, taught by an older surfer (who will be played by Baker) and his mysterious wife. Spurred on by their guru, the boys recklessly test their limits as they try to escape their mundane lives. The story holds personal resonances for Baker. "Winton's book captures the excitement and brutality of growing up in a way I've only experienced but have never been able to articulate," he says.

Filming in Australia (no dates are set) means Baker will be thrown into the middle of the debate about why so many local films fail at the box office. "Do we try to parody ourselves too much? Do we take ourselves too seriously? Do we try to pander to foreign audiences? I don't know," he says. "But I think we worry way too much about that.

"We've got to think more about just making good entertaining films. People are always complaining that audiences just won't go and see Australian films, but it's a tough one. I can comment on it now, yeah, but when I try to make an Australian film we'll see how it is and how I feel about it." Winton is a dedicated surfer and so is Baker, so that's a promising start.
Breath will be Baker's first stab at producing his own film and he is very happy about the development. Meanwhile, although he is applauded for his work, has made a good living from it for years and lives the Hollywood dream with his wife and children, Baker swears he never made the mental leap necessary to see himself as a professional actor. "It's the truth, I never really committed to it. I still feel like someone's going to knock on the door and say 'C'mon, get outta here.' "

Some progress has been made in accepting who he is: when travelling, Baker can now admit to his profession. "Apparently Steve McQueen used to write movie star on landing cards. I haven't got there yet. I'd probably have to write TV star, but has been in some movies."