Simon Baker has burst onto the small screen playing Patrick Jane on CBS’s The Mentalist. Some people may recognize him from his work on the movie L.A. Confidential or his role as a sleazy writer opposite Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada. But now Baker has made quite a splash in his new hit show.
The Mentalist
CBS’s new drama is centered around Baker’s character, Patrick Jane. Jane is a former television psychic and now works with the California Bureau of Investigation. He has an uncanny knack of reading people extremely well and picking up on things others might miss. In Baker’s own words, Patrick Jane “reads people. He doesn't use anything spooky or wooky. He's just straight-up a guy who's a bit of a con man himself, and he's able to gauge people. I love that.”
According to the show’s creator, Bruno Heller, Baker plays the character quite well. “It's a tough character, being the character who always knows better than other people. And he manipulates other people and gets in other people's faces. So it needs to be someone that you really want to spend time with. That's clearly what Simon brings.”
Baker is going to get a chance to grow in the character since The Mentalist” is the top-rated new series with an average of 16.2 million viewers per week, according to USA Today.
Baker’s Past
Before he was flexing his acting chops with a weekly hit show, Baker was born Simon Denny in 1969 in Australia. He originally went to school to study nursing but quickly caught the acting bug.
His career started by appearing in several music videos followed by parts in three successful Australian TV series: E Street, Home and Away and Heartbreak High. In 1993, he won an Australian Logie award for Best New Talent for his role in E Street.
He came to the United States in 1995 and was immediately cast in a small role in L.A. Confidential with fellow Aussie Russel Crowe. Shortly after the movie came out, Baker married actress and Aussie Rebecca Rigg, whom he had daughter Stella with. The couple went on to have two more children; son Claude was born in 1998 and son Harry, whose godmother in fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman, followed in 2001.
After a stint as an Anne Hathaway love interest in The Devil Wears Prada, Baker took some time off to be with his family. He then got a chance to make a name for himself on the small screen with The Mentalist and he jumped at it.
He told Kelley Carter of USA Today, “I feel on top of the world. I'm blessed. The show's succeeding. And to walk in there in the morning and say hello to my crew and pat them on the back, and they're all excited and they're floating on air? I love that feeling.”
Catch new episodes of The Mentalist Tuesdays at 9PM EST.
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