George Baker (British actor)


George Morris Baker was an English actor and writer. He was best known for portraying Tiberius in I, Claudius, and Inspector Wexford in The [Ruth Rendell Mysteries].

Early life

Baker was born in Varna, Bulgaria. His father was an English businessman and honorary vice consul and his mother an Irish International [Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement|Red Cross] nurse who moved to Bulgaria to help fight cholera.
He attended Lancing College, Sussex; he then appeared as an actor in repertory theatre and at The Old Vic.

Career

Early film stardom

Baker's first film was The Intruder. He made his name in The Dam Busters, and his first starring role was in The Ship That Died of Shame with Richard Attenborough.
Baker also starred as a leading man in The Woman for Joe opposite Diane Cilento; The Feminine Touch, playing a handsome doctor in a film about nurses; A Hill in Korea, playing a heroic soldier, with Robert Shaw and Stanley Baker in support; and The Extra Day, a comedy. The same year he appeared in the West End in Agatha Christie's play Towards Zero.
Baker was also the lead in These Dangerous Years, an attempt to make a film star of Frankie Vaughan. He was a doctor again in No Time for Tears and played a royalist swashbuckling hero of the English Civil War in The Moonraker. He supported Diana Dors in Tread Softly Stranger. However, he never quite became a movie star.
Baker's later films include Lancelot and Guinevere and Curse of the Fly.

Television work

Over time, Baker became better known as a television actor. He had the heroic lead in Rupert of Hentzau, played security chief Thallon in Undermind, and was the second of many actors to portray the role of "Number Two" in the series The Prisoner, appearing in the series' first episode. He portrayed the character of George King in Dennis Potter's The Bone Grinder, a metaphor for the decline of the British Empire and the rise of American power in the post-war world.
He appeared in his own television comedy series Bowler. He was also in the first episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, playing a company boss interviewing the show's hapless main character.
In the acclaimed 1976 drama serial I, Claudius, Baker played the emperor Tiberius Caesar. George R. R. Martin, author of the book series A Song of Ice and Fire, which was later adapted into TV's Game of Thrones, has stated that the historical Tiberius and Baker's performance in particular were part of the inspiration for his character Stannis Baratheon. He also appeared in an episode of Get Some In!.
In 1977, he starred as Inspector Roderick Alleyn in the Ngaio Marsh Theatre, comprising four adaptations of the crime and mystery novels of Ngaio Marsh with New Zealand settings, in a production for New Zealand television. From 1987 to 2000, he played Inspector Reg Wexford in numerous television adaptations of mysteries by Ruth Rendell, and this is probably the role for which he became best known. In 1993, following the death of his second wife, he married the actress Louie Ramsay, who played Mrs Wexford in the same television series.
He also appeared in The Baron, Survivors, Minder in Series 1's '"You Gotta Have Friends", Coronation Street, in the Doctor Who story Full Circle and as twin brothers in a 2005 episode of Midsomer Murders titled "The House in the Woods".
Baker also appeared in the British comedy television series The Goodies' episode "The Goodies episodes#ep1|Tower of London]" as the "Chief Beefeater", as well as in the sitcom No Job for a Lady, and he is popularly known for playing Captain Benson, the James Bond ally in the film The [Spy Who Loved Me (film)|The Spy Who Loved Me], and for playing Sir Hilary Bray, a heraldry expert, in On [Her Majesty's Secret Service (film)|On Her Majesty's Secret Service]. Later, when Bond, played by George Lazenby, impersonates Bray to gain access to Blofeld, Baker's voice was dubbed in place of Lazenby's to provide the accent. Baker also played an NASA engineer in You Only Live Twice.
Ian Fleming considered Baker to be the ideal candidate to play James Bond in the films. but the role went to Sean Connery, because Baker had prior commitments.
He played a character called "Jamus Bondus" in an episode of the 1970s farcical sitcom Up Pompeii!.
Baker's first theatre work was in repertory at Deal, Kent. His major stage credits include a season with The Old Vic company, where he played Bolingbroke in Richard II, Jack in The Importance of Being Earnest and Warwick in Saint Joan. In 1965, he started his own touring company, Candida Plays, based at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. He was Claudius in Buzz Goodbody's celebrated, modern-dress Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1975.
In 1980, Baker wrote Fatal Spring, a play for television dealing with lives of poets Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves; this appeared on BBC Two on 7 November 1980. It won him a United Nations peace award. His other writing credits included four of the Wexford screenplays.
Baker was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1995 when he was surprised by Michael Aspel during a photo shoot on board a boat at Port Solent on the Hampshire coast. He also appeared on Lily Savage's Blankety Blank.

MBE

In 2007, Baker was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his charitable work helping to establish a youth club in his home village.

Personal life

Baker's third wife, Louie Ramsay, who died earlier in 2011, played his onscreen wife Dora in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries. Baker was survived by five daughters.
Baker’s eldest daughter is Candida Baker, an Australian journalist and author, who moved to Australia in 1977. Her published works include fiction, non-fiction and autobiographical writing. She is known for her long-standing interest in horses and natural horsemanship.
His granddaughter Kim Sherwood is a writer; her debut novel, Testament, was inspired by her paternal grandmother's experience of the Holocaust as well as her grief over Baker's death. Sherwood was selected in 2021 to write a trilogy of List of [James Bond novels and short stories|James Bond books], the franchise of which Baker participated in several of its film adaptations, becoming the first woman to do so.

Death

Baker died of pneumonia, following a stroke, on 7 October 2011 at the age of 80.

Filmography

Film

Television

Publications

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Works cited

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