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Joe Don Baker

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Joe Don Baker

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American actor (1936–2025)

Film & TV

Acting · Groesbeck, Texas, USA

Joe Don Baker (February 12, 1936 - May 7, 2025) was an American film actor, perhaps best known for his roles as a Mafia hitman in Charley Varrick, real-life Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser in Walking Tall, James Bond villain Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights, and CIA agent Jack Wade in the James Bond films GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies.

Known for

  • Mud — King2013
  • Strange Wilderness — Bill Calhoun2008
  • The 50 Greatest Television Dramas — Self2007
  • The Dukes of Hazzard — Governor Jim Applewhite2005
  • Sam Peckinpah's West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade — Self (archive footage)2004
  • The Commission — Rep. Hale Boggs2003
  • Joe Dirt — Don, Brandy's Dad (uncredited)2001
  • Vegas, City of Dreams — Dylan Garrett2001
  • Inside The Living Daylights — Self2000
  • Inside 'The Living Daylights' — Self2000

via TMDB

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Origin
Ireland
Active from
1950-08-26
rock

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
1
Total plays
1

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Joe+Don+Baker">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Joe Don Baker

Key facts

Born
( 1936-02-12 ) February 12, 1936, Groesbeck, Texas , U.S.
Died
May 7, 2025 (2025-05-07) (aged 89), Los Angeles, California , U.S.
Education
North Texas State (now University of North Texas )
Occupation
Actor
Years active
1963–2012
Spouse
Marlo Baker ​ ​ ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1969 ; divorced</span>"}]]}'>div. 1980 ) ​

via Wikipedia infobox

~7 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Joe Don Baker (February 12, 1936 – May 7, 2025) was an American actor, known for playing "tough guy" characters on both sides of the law. He established himself as an action star with supporting roles in the Westerns Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) and Wild Rovers (1971), before his breakthrough role as real-life Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser in the film Walking Tall (1973).

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Baker found success playing both leading and supporting roles, including a mafia hitman in Charley Varrick (1973), a brute force detective in Mitchell (1975), a legendary baseball player in The Natural (1984), a police chief in the Chevy Chase comedy Fletch (1985), and a morally dubious private investigator in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991). He was in three James Bond films, as both a villain and an ally, portraying Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights (1987) with Timothy Dalton, and CIA agent Jack Wade in GoldenEye (1995) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) with Pierce Brosnan.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Joe Don Baker” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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