Carroll Baker
Carroll Baker 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.
Known for
ActingBirthday
May 28, 1931Gender
FemaleKnown Movie Credits
83Place of birth
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USAAlso known as
Carrol Baker, Karolina Piekarski
Cast credits
Kindergarten Cop
Eleanor Crisp
Giant
Luz Benedict II
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Veronica
The Game
Ilsa
The Watcher in the Woods
Helen Curtis
Star 80
Dorothy's Mum
How the West Was Won
Eve Prescott Rawlings
The Big Country
Patricia Terrill
Harlow
Jean Harlow
Baby Doll
Baby Doll Meighan
Cheyenne Autumn
Deborah Wright
Knife of Ice
Martha Caldwell
Ironweed
Annie Phelan
The Fourth Victim
Julie Spencer / Lillian Martin
Cyclone
Sheila
The Carpetbaggers
Rina Marlowe Cord
Paranoia
Kathryn West
Bad
Hazel Aiken
Hollywood Uncensored
Self
Something Wild
Mary Ann Robinson
Baba Yaga
Baba YagaImages
