Profile via TMDB · Courtesy of TMDB
Joe Don Baker
Sign in to saveAmerican actor (1936–2025)
OverviewAI-generated
Joe Don Baker was an American actor working in both television and film, born in Groesbeck, Texas, on 12 February 1936. He studied at the University of North Texas and the Actors Studio, and worked professionally from 1963 to 2012. A native English speaker, he also wrote in English throughout his career. He died in Los Angeles on 7 May 2025, and was buried at Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery.
Synthesized by Vinony from 22 facts across 2 sources: Wikidata, TMDb. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
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
Discography
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>
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- PLS-SEM: Indeed a Silver Bullet
· 2011 · cited 16,237x
- Hierarchical Grouping to Optimize an Objective Function
· 1963 · cited 14,271x
- Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis
· 2022 · cited 13,904x
- Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
· 2016 · cited 11,704x
- Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 354 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017
· 2018 · cited 10,997x
via Crossref · CC0
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
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Don
- Family name
- Baker
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Groesbeck
- Place of death
- Los Angeles
- Occupation
- film actor
- Educated at
- Actors Studio
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Native language
- English language
- Image
- Joe Don Baker "Mitchell" (1977 CBS press photo).jpg
Show 8 more facts
- date of birth
- 1936-02-12
- start of work period
- 1963-00-00
- writing language
- English language
- date of death
- 2025-05-07
- name in native language
- Joe Don Baker
- end of work period
- 2012-00-00
- Commons category
- Joe Don Baker
- place of burial
- Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery
Sources (7)
via Wikidata · CC0
~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.