The Fabulous Baker Boy

There's no place like home, you say? The Guardian's Simon Baker would have to disagree, mate. His mellow Malibu beach house—complete with eucalyptus trees, ocean breezes and a cool collection of surfboards—conjures up beautiful memories of his beloved Australia.

A Pacific storm is pounding the Malibu shore, churning the surf into a muddy lather. On any other Saturday morning, Simon Baker would most likely be out there straddling his Yater Spoon surfboard, perhaps teaching his 9-year-old daughter, Stella, to ride the waves just as he did as a golden-haired youth growing up in Australia. Instead, he's sitting barefoot in the window seat of his kitchen, wearing jeans and a paisley shirt, checking the news on his Apple laptop—which is set to The Sydney Morning Herald. "I get back home nearly every day on the computer,” says the 33-year-old actor. "It's weird, but the last 12 months, I've been crazy about it.”

His wife, actress Rebecca Rigg, 35, sets down a plate of Thin Mints Girl Scout cookies, pours some tea, and picks up the topic where her husband left off. "Since we've lived here, we've become so … patriotic,” she says. "Almost flag-waving Australians. We've just taken it up.”

Fortunately, the Bakers have found the perfect antidote for their homesickness. They've created an L.A. nest for themselves and their three kids—Stella, Claude, 4, and Harry, 1—that reminds them of Australia. Baker discovered the neighborhood a few years ago, when he drove up the coast to surf with some Aussie buddies who live nearby. No sooner did the actor land his own TV series, The Guardian, in 2001 (he plays Nick Fallin, a slick-suited attorney who is sentenced to work as a child advocate after being busted for drug use), than he and Rigg splurged on the fifties-era ranch house. Surrounded by eucalyptus and bottle trees, and sitting on a grassy Malibu acre that's within easy reach of secluded beaches, the three-bedroom home has become a welcome respite from the TV grind. "Every Australian who comes up here says, 'God, this feels like Australia,'” says Rigg.

Initially, it didn't. So to give their home a more "open, beach-house feel,” the couple decided to streamline the place and rid the house of its country touches. "We have so much chaos already in our lives—the kids, work—so we didn't want a lot of frilly stuff,” says Baker. "It's very muted.” They painted the knotty-pine plank floors a cool gray and the walls a crisp white, raised the living room ceiling to expose structural beams, added built-in bookshelves for their Asian artifacts, and turned a drab office into a comfortable family room with French doors (behind which rests the only TV in the house). "It's very relaxed now,” says Baker, who was hands-on throughout the design process.

The furniture—much of it picked up during the couple's travels—adds a personal touch. There's a nine-foot dining table with bench seats all made of recycled teak from Indonesia ("Not the new teak that's upsetting the whole rain forest ecosystem,” says the environmentally conscious Rigg), an antique Japanese kimono cabinet made of balsa wood that houses Baker's collection of cameras, a soapstone Buddha head Rigg brought back from Cambodia when she was 19, and baskets from Thailand. "Asia is such a part of most Australians' aesthetic,” Rigg explains. "Everyone would go to Bali and bring back fabrics, masks and wooden things. People would get off the airplane with these weird objects.”

The land surrounding the house was equally rich with possibilities: A pathway connects a two-bedroom guesthouse, which has a makeshift darkroom for Baker's photography, and a small artist's studio (formerly a tack room for horseback-riding equipment), where Rigg paints. A one-bedroom trailer, where her younger brother, Jake, has been staying ("The Love Shack,” Baker has jokingly dubbed it), has a private deck where Baker likes to read scripts or nap on an outdoor sofa. "You could sit there in the nude all day long and no one would see you,” he says. Along the way there's a grassy patch of lawn where Baker can camp outside with Claude; there's even a chicken coop for their rust-feathered hen, May. "It's heaven,” says Baker. "A good place to spend time.”

Indeed, hanging out is something of an art form at the Baker house. As the skies fill with thunder and a fire roars in the dining room's gray-brick fireplace, Rigg chops prosciutto for a pasta salad and opens a bottle of red wine. The sensual sound of Sade pours from wall speakers as the conversation turns to another Aussie art form: swearing. "What you see is what you get with us,” says Rigg, who can be as verbally colorful as she is direct. "Stella is always saying, 'You've got to stop swearing in front of my friends. It's humiliating.' But Australians use swear words in an endearing way.”

"Simon and Rebecca have got a lot of exuberance and intensity,” says David Hollander, creator of The Guardian and a frequent guest at the Baker house. "Their home is not a place you go to watch TV but a place to have debates and play hard. These two people attack life.”

Nicole Kidman, another of the couple's close friends, agrees. "Their place has such a good vibe,” she says. "I always say, if I ever buy another place in California, it'll be out near them. We can create a little commune.”

Like Kidman and the rest of his circle of friends (Naomi Watts and Russell Crowe among them), Baker comes by his high-spiritedness naturally. Born in Tasmania, Baker moved with his family around Australia before settling in the idyllic coastal community of Byron Bay. As a kid Baker developed an independent streak. He'd ride his bike to the beach and sleep on the sand with his friends. "I didn't grow up with money, but I grew up with a lot of space,” he says. "All I did was surf. I was committed to the ocean. That's one thing about Australians—we have the capacity to embrace life.”

After a short stint in nursing school ("There were six girls to one guy,” says Baker. "It was fun”), he appeared in commercials, modeled in print ads, and—as his wife delights in recounting—"worked as a dancer in music videos.”

"A dancer?” responds a chagrined Baker. "Well, you were,” says Rigg, playfully adding, "Aw… am I in trouble for saying that?”

By the time Baker and the straight-shooting Rigg met through mutual friends in 1991, he had been cast for a popular prime-time TV soap opera, E Street. "He seemed quite naïve, a country boy,” says Rigg, a city girl who had been acting since she was 11. "He was introduced to me as Smiley. He'd been called that since he was 8 or 9 years old. Then, the second night we were out, I said, 'I can't call you this. I need to know what your name is.'”

The couple moved in with each other six weeks later. In 1995 they headed for L.A. Soon after, Baker landed a string of movie roles, starting with a part in L.A. Confidential. A year later, they were married in a grove of eucalyptus trees on her mother's 40-acre property outside Sydney. Rigg and her two bridesmaids—her sister, Amy, and Watts—wore vintage nightgowns. "It went on for three days and turned into a bit of a bacchanalia,” Riggs recalls. "Naomi was in the lake, her gown disintegrating. People stayed overnight and basically slept where they fell. It was beautiful.”

So is the couple's life together. Savoring each and every moment of family is important to them—and that passionate nature is something they've passed on to their children. "Hey, there're some good puddles, Claude!” Baker calls to his son as they troop across the yard. It's mid-afternoon, and the rain is still coming down. Rigg signals that lunch is ready. Afterward, there will be time for more puddle-jumping, maybe even an hour or two of surfing. Or perhaps the couple can find some rare time alone together.

The Love Shack awaits.

© 2003