
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.
Carrol Baker · Karolina Piekarski · کارول بیکر
Profile images from TMDB · click to enlarge
4 images
Titles counted once; a person can act and direct on the same film (roles merged).
107
Acting credits
0
Directing
0
Writing
0
Other crew
Highest TMDB score (min 100 votes)
Tales from the Crypt
1989 · tv · as Mother Paloma ("segment "The Trap")
Roswell
1999 · tv · as Claudia Parker
The Big Country
1958 · movie · as Patricia Terrill
Giant
1956 · movie · as Luz Benedict II
The Game
1997 · movie · as Ilsa
Murder, She Wrote
1984 · tv · as Sibella Stone
Baby Doll
1956 · movie · as Baby Doll Meighan
How the West Was Won
1962 · movie · as Eve Prescott Rawlings
Highest TMDB vote count (attention / reach proxy; not box office)
By release / first air year · movie & TV merged