Transcript from Magscan.

November 1993 - WhoWeekly

By Michael Fitzgerald

Home is Where His Heart Is

With a new baby and new role in Home And Away, Simon Baker-Denny is a long way from E Street

It was bye-bye, boy-next-door when Simon Baker-Denny stripped for the pages of the coffee-table art magazine Black+White last year. "At that time I was on the cover of magazines looking all fresh and spright, so Aryan and healthy," says the 24-year-old actor, who rocketed to fame as the hunky Constable Sam Farrell  in the now-defunct soap E Street. In a mood of rebellion, he writhed naked on a Sydney beach and simulated masturbation for the magazine's camera, "FOR SALE" emblazoned in lipstick across his torso. "It was a send-up of myself, basically - everything that I had become in the media."

How times have changed. A year later, amid a sea of packing cases in the lounge room of the rented flat in Sydney's eastern suburbs where he and girlfriend Rebecca Rigg, 25, have just moved from Palm Beach, Baker-Denny is bouncing the couple's 3-month old daughter, Stella Breeze, on his knee. The rebel now has a cause: fatherhood. "It's a miracle having a child and watching someone develop a personality and grow and learn all these things," he says. Stella bears her dad's sunny mien rather than the dark, sultry looks of actress Rebecca, perhaps best known for her juvenile leads in the films Fatty Finn and Fortress.

"When she was first born, I thought, "She's a part of me and a part of Rebecca, and now I look at her and she's her own person ... It's worth staying up all night to watch it. You just don't want to miss a second."

But a family has to eat and, since Stella's home birth in August, Baker-Denny has been busy on the acting hustings, complete with a name change. Wanting Stella to grow up "knowing her family history", the actor decided to add Baker, his natural father's surname, to that of his stepfather. Baker-Denny's new moniker made its debut in the credits of the Nov. 2 episode of the ABC drama GP when the actor played mechanic Ben Miller, who discovers his father has a hereditary disease. And now he's back sudsing himself in soapie waters with a two-month stint as the lusty schoolteacher James Hudson on Australia's most popular drama, Home And Away. "You can easily fall into a trap of laziness - say the words, wash the make-up off and go home," he says of his Summer Bay sojourn. "But if you do have a bit of a think about your stuff, it's good practice." Still, "I can't wait till [Rebecca]'s working for a while and I can stay home."

Baker-Denny might not get the chance. He threw himself into summer workshops at the National Institute for Dramatic Art a few months before E Street's demise in May this year and has read for the Sydney Theatre Company. His rise from soapie toy-boy to the ranks of Serious Young Actor is starting to attract notice from those who count. "He's very much a thinking actor," says Home And Away's executive producer, Andrew Howie. "He has quite a range, it's just that he's not given that much opportunity." Adds Peter Andrikidis, who directed Simon in GP. He's very similar to a young Peter Phelps [Sons and Daughters], a really down-to-earth guy who takes his art very seriously. He's growing up fast."

The second of three children, Simon was born in Launceston to Barry Baker, a mechanic, and Liz, who is studying drama at Armidale's University of New England. After his parents separated when he was 2, Simon lived with his mother and stepfather Tom Denny, a butcher, in Ballina, on the NSW North Coast.

"He was a grommet," says sister Terri Robertson, 26, a doctor. "They're the little surfers [who] hang out with the older surfers."

After his HSC, Simon took a stab at nursing in Sydney and fell into modelling in 1989 after reading a newspaper ad. "He was really just lost for a while, not really knowing what he wanted to do," recalls Terri. As an extra in the video for poster Melissa Tkautz's first single "Read My Lips", he was spotted by E Street's executive producer Forrest Redlich, and recruited for the show, winning a Logie last year for Best New Talent.

It was through mutual friend Sophie Moeller, a former finance journalist for The Australian, that Denny and Rigg met in 1991. "She's caught between [acting] and just wanting to be the ultimate mother," he says of Rebecca. While she decides, Baker-Denny will keep trying his luck, angling for the chance to show his true acting colours. "I don't know, I'm a Leo and I always land on my feet," he muses. "I'm a cat. I've always been fine. I always will, I think." Keep an eye on what this cat drags in.

Photo Captions:

"It's just stripped back all the veneer," Baker-Denny (with partner Rebecca Rigg and, top, with Stella Breeze) says of fatherhood.

"My family is my No. 1 priority" says Baker-Denny (fixing shelves in his Sydney flat). "If a situation arises where I have to spend time away, I just won't do it."

"Working on Home And Away "does hone you a bit", says the actor (as teacher James Hudson with Lisa Lackey's femme fatale Roxy Miller).

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