Hollywood star Simon Baker said he had no acting ambitions at first
How Aussie export Simon Baker fell into a career as an actor, won over Hollywood and became an accidental sex symbol.
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He was working as a pool attendant at the newly opened Sanctuary Cove resort. Any spare time, any spare thought, was spent chasing waves on the Gold Coast, and crashing with his surfie mates at their fibro shack which backed on to the beach at Surfers Paradise. It was the twilight of the 1980s and Simon Baker, a carefree school graduate, had no idea, and no real cares, about what lay ahead.
“No, no, no, I didn’t have any acting dreams,” the now 48-year-old father-of-three insists when U on Sunday sits down with him at the plush QT Hotel in Surfers Paradise for a chat about his latest film, Breath, based on Tim Winton’s novel.
It’s about 30 years since Baker lived here. In the interim, his ruggedly handsome face, sharp blue eyes and self-deprecating smile have taken him all the way to Hollywood Boulevard, where he has his own star on the sidewalk; and seen him receive critical acclaim, and an adoring fan base for his movie roles (Red Planet, The Devil Wears Prada and Margin Call) and television gigs (The Guardian, and his most famous role as maverick police consultant Patrick Jane on The Mentalist).
Not surprisingly, this same natural charm led to Baker’s first acting opportunity which came by accident rather than by design. And it happened in Brisbane.
“We were going camping,” he says, setting up the story of how he and a mate were driving up from the Coast when his friend said they had to make a slight detour into Brisbane because he had an audition for a TV ad.
“My friend told me I could wait in the car or come in and hang out; so I came into the waiting room and the casting woman came in with a clipboard and said to me ‘Have you signed in’ and I said: ‘Oh no, I’m just here with a friend’, and she said, ‘why don’t you sign in and go in’.
“I had never done drama or improvisation before. I was used to knocking around with my mates – a bit of jive talk on the beach, on the streets, that’s all,’’ he laughs.
Needless to say he got the gig. Two years later he landed a job on the Australian TV soapie E Street (“I wasn’t trying for it,’’ he again insists) playing fresh-faced Constable Sam Farrell. It was on that series that he met his future wife, Gold Coast-raised actor Rebecca Rigg.
Baker apologises in advance for eating during our chat. His mop of boyish golden-curled hair and grey flecked-stubble is lit with a wide grin, and deep laugh before he proceeds to wolf down a salad wrap and some fruit pieces. He is refuelling after making the most of a rare break from promotional duties at last week’s Queensland premiere of Breath at the Gold Coast Film Festival, to catch up for “a quick paddle with the boys’’.
The boys are Samson Coulter and Ben Spence who play the lead roles of Pikelet, 13, and Loonie, 14, in the film. Baker co-wrote, co-produced and co-stars in Breath which is also his directorial debut.
As a father of two teenage boys himself, Baker has developed a strong bond with his young proteges with Coulter from Sydney and Spence from Western Australia.
Baker’s own family are never far from his mind, and, at an exclusive U on Sunday photo shoot earlier at Burleigh Heads, he was keen to capture a shot of the stunning beach scene to show his tribe at home. He celebrates 20 years of marriage this year to Rigg and the couple has three children, Stella Breeze, 24, Claude Blue, 19, and Harry Friday, 16.
He says all of his children go for a “paddle now and then’’ but it is his youngest Harry, who has inherited his father’s passion for surfing.
“It’s a great joy in seeing him (Harry) surf and catch waves,’’ he explains. “I like seeing him gain trust and physical confidence in himself; to trust his wits in certain situations, because that is what a lot of what surfing teaches you.’’
Baker explains he tries to find the right balance between encouraging Harry and ensuring he doesn’t pressure his son to tackle challenging waves he is not yet ready for, because “you can’t push them into those things’’. He says it is important that Harry develops his surfing skills at his own pace.
This caring fatherly approach is the opposite pathway taken by his character “Sando’’ in the coming of age film Breath. The adrenaline-junkie Sando is former world professional surfing star Bill Sanderson who becomes like a “guru’’ to his “wide-eyed disciples’’ Bruce “Pikelet” Pike and best friend Ivan “Loonie” Loon.
Pikelet and Loonie, under the tutelage of Sando, learn to surf increasingly bigger and more dangerous monster waves as Sando conditions their minds and bodies to pursue the extraordinary. Pikelet’s parents, played by Richard Roxburgh and Rachael Blake, remain oblivious to their son’s adventures, as Sando lures, even bullies, them on his increasingly perilous missions.
Roxburgh says Baker is a natural director, and an excellent mentor to the young novice actors.
“I was attracted to working with Simon because I’ve always thought he was a lovely bloke, a terrific actor, and I thought he would work really well with the young actors,’’ he says.
Roxburgh says his role as the staid and reserved father becomes a counterpoint to Baker’s risk-taking and larger-than-life Sando.
“My character is part of the domestic backdrop, I’m often at the garden shed, being very kindly and terribly worried about my son’s wellbeing. I know something is wrong, but I cannot identify it,’’ Roxburgh says.
When Sando and Loonie go overseas on a big-wave excursion, an unsettled Pikelet starts spending unhealthy periods of time alone with Sando’s headstrong wife Eva (Elizabeth Debecki), who carries a permanent knee injury from competitive aerial skiing.
“The film is about the anguish of parenting, of being a parent and watching your son moving and shifting away, being pulled away from you in this strong current and the terrible fear that goes with that,’’ Roxburgh says.
It took Sydney-based Baker a year to cast the two leading actors after a social media call-out to competent surfers netted thousands of entries from around the country including many from Queensland’s Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.
Baker, who did much of his own surfing, is surprised that Winton envisaged him as Sando for the film version of his 2009 Miles Franklin Award winner and much-loved bestseller.
“I suppose I don’t know too many actors who surf, there’s a few that have a paddle,’’ Baker says. “I’m at that point, where it is sort of getting sad, because my body is not keeping up with what my heart and mind want to do, sometimes it’s humiliating and sometimes it’s exhilarating.’’
When producing partner Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad) gave Baker the novel to read in 2015 he was immediately smitten and secretly harboured dreams to direct a film adaptation. Baker has directed several episodes of his television shows, including The Mentalist, over the years.
“We started meeting with a few different directors and started developing the script and at one point Mark turned around and literally said ‘has it occurred to you, that you should direct this film’ and I said ‘Yes’,’’ Baker says.
He did have doubts and he worried about time constraints, but then his seven-year contract on The Mentalist ended.
He has devoted several years to bringing the film to the screen including extensive scouting of the Western Australia coast, where the novel is set, and finding the perfect locations on the southern coastline at Denmark and Ocean Beach.
Baker enlisted “colourful’’ Brisbane-based screenwriter Gerard Lee (Top of the Lake) to help with the film script.
“I knew I had to reduce it down to certain
key thematic moments and hone in on those and the story, I had to let go of the book in a lot of ways,’’ he says.
Tasmanian-born Baker sees some similarities with his own childhood, growing up in Lennox Heads, on the northern NSW coast, and spending plenty of time at the beach with his surfing buddies. The former Ballina High School student admits he was more like the reserved and restrained Pikelet than the confident and thrillseeking Loonie or Sando.
“I grew up riding around with a pushbike with my mates, discovering the ocean and surfing,’’ Baker says. “There are a lot of parallels there with the book but there are obvious parallels with a lot of people who grew up in Australia.’’
Roxburgh agrees: “Tim Winton can really write about water, especially about the nature of water: what it is; what it does for us; and what it is to be with it; and to live with such a passion for it.’’
It was while growing up that Baker first developed a love for going to the movies.
“As a kid I would go to see a movie and I would be instantly transported by the story and characters. You go, ‘oh wow, I would like to do that one day’,’’ he says.
The 1957 American classic Old Yeller, about a young boy and his ill-fated dog, profoundly affected him as a Year 3 student.
“It’s funny because I watched Old Yeller with my kids 10 years ago and they were saying ‘why are you making us watch this?’,’’ he says. “It’s so heartbreaking and powerful. I can track back the emotional impact that cinema has had on me over the years to that point.
“I still get so excited about going to the movies, getting a choc-top, sitting in that dark room and letting a film take me away.’’
Baker grew up as Simon Denny – the name of his stepfather – but changed it to Simon Denny Baker after reuniting with his birth father as an adult. He later dropped the Denny part.
In 1993 he won the Logie for most popular new talent and then appeared in Home and Away (as James Hudson: 1993-1994) and Heartbreak High (as Tom Summers: 1996).
Baker and Rigg – who married in 1998 after five years of living together – decided to try their luck in the US, which became their base for 18 years.
Soon after arriving, he landed a role as troubled gay actor Matt Reynolds in the Oscar-winning LA Confidential (1998) and a couple of years later snared the key role of lawyer Nick Fallin in the television series The Guardian (2001-2004).
But it was his role as the cheeky and sharp-minded former conman Patrick Jane on The Mentalist (2008-15) which saw an astronomic popularity rise, especially among women. It was rumoured he signed a contract that delivered a payment of $US30 million for his role as Jane. Some 17 million watched the final episode of The Mentalist in the US alone.
His rising profile also led to contracts promoting prestigious French perfume house Givenchy as well as Longines watches.
“I take my hat off to Simon, and others, who have moved to America and have achieved over there,’’ Roxburgh says.
For Baker, his focus is not on the past but on the future, and that continues to look bright with the actor recently optioning Winton’s latest novel The Shepherd’s Hut.
“You should read it,’’ suggests Baker, flashing that trademark winning smile once more.
Breath opens Thursday
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