Carroll Baker
Carroll Baker (born May 28, 1931) is a former American actress who has enjoyed popularity as both a serious dramatic actress and, particularly in the 1960s, as a movie sex symbol. After studying under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, Baker began performing on Broadway in 1954. From there, she was recruited by director Elia Kazan to play the lead in the adaptation of two Tennessee Williams plays into the film Baby Doll in 1956. In the mid-1960s, as a contract player for Paramount Pictures, Baker became a sex symbol after appearing as a hedonistic widow in The Carpetbaggers (1964). The film's producer, Joseph E. Levine, cast her in Sylvia before giving her the role of Jean Harlow in the biopic Harlow (1965). Despite significant prepublicity, Harlow was a critical failure, and Baker relocated to Italy in 1966 amid a legal dispute over her contract with Paramount and Levine's overseeing of her career. In Europe, she spent the next 10 years starring in hard-edged giallo and horror films, including Romolo Guerrieri's The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968), a series of four films with Umberto Lenzi beginning with Orgasmo (1969) and ending with Knife of Ice (1972), and Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga (1973). Baker appeared in supporting roles in several acclaimed dramas in the 1980s, including the drama Star 80 (1983) as the mother of murder victim Dorothy Stratten, and the racial drama Native Son (1986), based on the novel by Richard Wright. Through the 1990s Baker had guest roles in several television series, such as Murder, She Wrote; L.A. Law, and Roswell. She formally retired from acting in 2003.
Acting
Movie
The Game
as Ilsa
1997
Movie
Kindergarten Cop
as Eleanor Crisp
1990
TV
Tales from the Crypt
as Mother Paloma ("segment "The Trap")
1989
Movie
Giant
as Luz Benedict II
1956
Movie
How the West Was Won
as Eve Prescott Rawlings
1962
TV
Roswell
as Claudia Parker
1999
TV
Murder, She Wrote
as Sibella Stone
1984
Movie
The Big Country
as Patricia Terrill
1958
Movie
The Greatest Story Ever Told
as Veronica
1965
Movie
The Watcher in the Woods
as Helen Curtis
1980
Movie
Cheyenne Autumn
as Deborah Wright
1964
Movie
Ironweed
as Annie Phelan
1987
Movie
Star 80
as Dorothy's Mum
1983
Movie
Baby Doll
as Baby Doll Meighan
1956
Movie
Baba Yaga
as Baba Yaga
1973
TV
The Oscars
as Self
1953
TV
E! True Hollywood Story
1996
TV
Chicago Hope
as Sylvie Tannen
1994
TV
L.A. Law
as Rae Morrison
1986
Movie
Paranoia
as Kathryn West
1969
Movie
Bad
as Hazel Aiken
1977
Movie
A Quiet Place to Kill
as Helen
1970
Movie
Knife of Ice
as Martha Caldwell
1972
Movie
So Sweet... So Perverse
as Nicole Perrier
1969