Simon Baker, Rebecca Rigg divorce after 29 years together

Simon Baker and Rebecca Rigg have announced their divorce, ending one of Australian entertainment’s longest-running unions.

Australian actors Simon Baker and Rebecca Rigg have announced they’re divorcing after 29 years together.

Baker, 51, and Rigg, 53, met on a blind date in 1991 and married in 1998. Fox News reports that the pair actually split nine months ago, in April 2020.

In a joint statement, Baker and Rigg said their three children – Stella, 27, Claude, 22, and Harry, 19 – were their joint focus.

The couple actually split in April last year. Picture: AAP

“We remain close friends and our three children will always be the most important focus of our lives,” they said.

Baker has been one of Australia’s most successful acting exports in recent years, with starring roles in US TV dramas The Guardian (2001-2005) and The Mentalist (2008 – 2015).

Those high-profile TV gigs earned Baker big money: by 2013, he was earning more than $450,000 per episode of The Mentalist, and now has an estimated wealth of more than $50m.

The split announcement comes just as Baker’s completed publicity duties for his latest film High Ground, which hit cinemas in Australia this week.

Loved up in Byron Bay

Starring together in E-Street circa 1994.

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Rigg’s acting credits include A Country Practice, Spotswood, Blue Heelers and L.A. Doctors. She had largely retired from acting by the end of the 90s to raise the couple’s children.

The pair acted together in the early stages of their relationship, both appearing in the early 90s Australian soap E-Street.

Rigg and Baker in 1995.

Speaking about his marriage to People in 2018, Baker said: “We’re a team. Most of the time, 99 percent of the time, we’re really great friends … And I think the most important thing in our relationship is that we’re both able to be ourselves. I think it’s probably the most important thing in most relationships, isn’t it?”

In a 2015 interview with The Daily Telegraph, Baker said that Rigg was “the greatest woman any man could ever hope to make a life with,” adding, “Marrying her was the best decision I ever made.”