By Bianca Sierra
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
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.
For his portrayal of offbeat CIA agent Darius Jedburgh in the BBC television serial Edge of Darkness (1985), he was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor. He was also nominated for a Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Alabama governor Big Jim Folsom in the made-for-television film George Wallace (1997).
Baker died of lung cancer at an assisted living facility in Los Angeles on May 7, 2025.
Baker was born in Groesbeck, Texas, the son of Edna (née McDonald) and Doyle Charles Baker. He was raised by his aunt Anna Thompson after the death of his mother when he was 12. He played basketball and football (as linebacker and co-captain) at Groesbeck High School, and attended North Texas State College in Denton on a sports scholarship, where he was a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1958.
After serving in the United States Army for two years, Baker moved to New York City to study at the Actors Studio, of which he was a life member. He cited Robert Mitchum (with whom he would work in Cape Fear) and Spencer Tracy as his inspirations.
