Simon Baker is a self-confessed TV snob, and it took Scarpetta to lure him back to American TV Simon Baker is a self-confessed TV snob, and it took Scarpetta to lure him back to American TV This third era of Simon Baker’s career has been the most interesting, and it took something extra for him to return to American TV. After Simon Baker filmed a role in Taika Waititi’s next film, Klara and the Sun, he got a call that no actor wants to get. His role had been cut. “Taika sent me a text and he called me, and in his way, it was very witty and beautiful,” Baker tells The Nightly. “I remember sitting there going, ‘Wow, I’m so glad this happened to me in my 50s when I can have a laugh about it’.” “As opposed to maybe in my 20s, when it would have just crushed me. I would’ve thought, ‘I’m not that good, I’m terrible’.” Baker is not the same man that after his first act as a dreamy local soap star in E Street, Home and Away and Heartbreak High, chased his dream to Hollywood, where he would breakthrough in L.A. Confidential before film roles in the likes of The Devil Wears Prada and then a long-running stint as the lead of crime procedural The Mentalist. There are distinct chapters to Baker’s career, and it was this third era, the post-Mentalist years that have been the most interesting to watch. Baker has always had a commanding but effortless screen presence but perhaps his dramatic chops had been overlooked because of his, well, for lack of a better-term, his movie-star good looks. It’s easy enough to be distracted by the tussle of the blonde hair and the charming smile that extends to the corners of his blue-green eyes. After The Mentalist wrapped in 2015, he came home to Australia because he wanted to do something different, something more. “That show I did in the States went for seven seasons.#nicole_kidman #liz_sarnoff #simon_baker #taika_waititi #klara_and_the_sun
