56 Facts About Carroll Baker

Carroll Baker was born on May 28,1931 and is a retired American actress.

Carroll Baker had other early film roles in Giant and the romantic comedy But Not for Me.

Carroll Baker went on to star in several critically acclaimed Westerns in the 1950s and 1960s such as The Big Country, How the West Was Won, and Cheyenne Autumn.

Carroll Baker re-emerged for American audiences as a character actress in the Andy Warhol-produced dark comedy Bad.

Carroll Baker appeared in supporting roles in several acclaimed dramas in the 1980s, including the true-crime drama Star 80 as the mother of murder victim Dorothy Stratten, and the racial drama Native Son, based on the novel by Richard Wright.

Carroll Baker had supporting parts in several big-budget films, such as Kindergarten Cop and the David Fincher-directed thriller The Game.

Carroll Baker was born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania into a Catholic family, the daughter of Edith Gertrude and William Watson Carroll Baker, a traveling salesman.

Carroll Baker is of Irish and Polish descent, which has given rise to a rumor that her birth name was Karolina Piekarski, though this currently cannot be substantiated by known records.

Carroll Baker's parents separated when she was eight years old, and she moved with her mother and younger sister, Virginia, to Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania.

In 1949, Carroll Baker won the title of Miss Florida Fruits and Vegetables.

In 1951, Carroll Baker moved to New York City, where she rented a dirt-floor basement apartment in Queens.

Carroll Baker worked as a nightclub dancer and had stints as a chorus girl in traveling vaudeville shows, which took her to Windsor, Detroit, and New Jersey.

Carroll Baker was considered for the lead in Rebel Without a Cause after James Dean recommended her for the part to director Nicholas Ray, which she turned down.

Simultaneously, Carroll Baker was cast as the title character in Elia Kazan's Baby Doll, a role initially intended for Marilyn Monroe.

Carroll Baker was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance, a Golden Globe for Best Actress, and won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer, which she shared with Jayne Mansfield and Natalie Wood.

Carroll Baker appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in June 1956.

Carroll Baker refused to make Too Much Too Soon, so Warner Bros.

Carroll Baker was chosen by MGM for the lead in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and by Twentieth Century Fox for The Three Faces of Eve, but her contract with Warner Bros.

The film was well received by critics, though the shoot was described as "problematic": Carroll Baker was four months pregnant at the time and had to wear restraining garments, and director Wyler reportedly had her on the verge of tears after forcing her to repeat the same take over 60 times, only to use the first one.

Carroll Baker followed The Big Country with lead roles in two romances, portraying a nun in The Miracle, co-starring Roger Moore, and in But Not for Me, a comedy with Clark Gable.

Carroll Baker went on to make the experimental film Something Wild, directed by her then-husband Jack Garfein.

In preparation for her role, Carroll Baker lived alone in a boarding house in New York's Lower East Side, and gained employment as a department-store salesgirl; her Method approach to the role was profiled in Life magazine in 1960.

In 1963, Carroll Baker relocated permanently with then-husband Jack Garfein and their two children to Los Angeles, where she based herself for the next several years.

Carroll Baker traveled to Kenya to film Mister Moses, where publicized rumors spread that she and co-star Robert Mitchum were having an affair, which they both vehemently denied.

Carroll Baker subsequently appeared with Maasai warriors on the cover of Lifes July 1964 issue.

Carroll Baker portrayed a pacifist Quaker schoolteacher in John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn, and received critical acclaim for the role.

Carroll Baker then had a supporting role as Saint Veronica in George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told, and portrayed a cynical, alcoholic movie star in The Carpetbaggers, which brought her a second wave of notoriety in spite of the film's lackluster reviews.

Carroll Baker appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on their November 2,1963, issue dressed as Harlow, promoting the film's upcoming production.

Carroll Baker likened this era of her career to "being a beauty contest winner [as opposed to] an actress".

Carroll Baker sued Levine in 1966 over her contract with Paramount Pictures, and was ultimately fired by Paramount and had her paychecks from Harlow frozen amid the contentious legal dispute; this left Carroll Baker hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Carroll Baker separated from her second husband, Jack Garfein, in 1967, and moved to Europe with her two children to pursue a career there after struggling to find work in Hollywood.

In 1966, Carroll Baker had been invited to the Venice International Film Festival, where she met director Marco Ferreri, who asked her to play the lead role in Her Harem.

Carroll Baker became a favorite of Umberto Lenzi, with her best-known role being in the aforementioned Paranoia, where she played a wealthy widow tormented by two sadistic siblings.

Carroll Baker is not intrinsically as bad as she appears in Paranoia.

Carroll Baker followed her roles in Lenzi's films with a leading role in Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga as the titular witch, alongside Isabelle De Funes and George Eastman.

Carroll Baker followed Bad with a part in the low-budget surrealist thriller The Sky Is Falling with Dennis Hopper, playing a washed-up actress living among expatriates in a Spanish village.

In 1978, while touring England and Ireland in productions of Motive, Carroll Baker met stage actor Donald Burton, who became her third husband.

Carroll Baker appeared in American stage productions of Georges Feydeau's 13 Rue de l'Amour, Forty Carats, and Goodbye Charlie.

Carroll Baker starred in a supporting role in the 1980 Walt Disney-produced horror film The Watcher in the Woods, alongside Bette Davis, after having been asked by British director John Hough, a longtime admirer of her work.

Carroll Baker appeared as the mother of Sigmund Freud in the comedy The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud with Carol Kane and Klaus Kinski.

Carroll Baker featured in Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil, a coming-of-age drama set against Nazi Germany, as well as in the drama Native Son, based on the novel by Richard Wright, which featured Matt Dillon, Geraldine Page, and a young Oprah Winfrey.

Critic Roger Ebert praised Carroll Baker's performance, noting her "powerful" scene with Winfrey during the film's finale.

In 1997, Carroll Baker was cast in a supporting role in David Fincher's thriller The Game, in which she plays a housekeeper to a billionaire San Francisco banker who becomes embroiled in a sadistic game by his antagonistic brother, played by Sean Penn.

In 2002, Carroll Baker appeared in the documentary Cinerama Adventure, and guest-starred in an episode of The Lyon's Den, playing the mother of Rob Lowe's character.

Carroll Baker's acting career spanned 50 years, and more than 80 roles in film, television, and theater.

Carroll Baker has sometimes participated in retrospective documentaries, including an interview for the 2006 DVD release of Baby Doll, which includes a documentary featuring Baker reflecting on the film's impact on her career.

Carroll Baker has been featured in documentaries about several of her co-stars, including Clark Gable, Roger Moore, Sal Mineo, and James Dean, including the 1975 James Dean: The First American Teenager, and a 1985 BBC Radio 2 tribute marking the 30th anniversary of the actor's death.

In 1983, Carroll Baker published an autobiography titled Baby Doll: An Autobiography, which detailed her life and career as an actress and revealed the issues with Paramount and Warner Bros.

Carroll Baker later wrote two other books, To Africa with Love, detailing her time spent in Africa, and a novel titled A Roman Tale.

Carroll Baker first married 54 year-old Louie Ritter, owner of the Weylin Hotel, in 1953.

Carroll Baker's second was to director Jack Garfein, a Holocaust survivor she met at the Studio and for whom she converted to Judaism.

Carroll Baker married her third husband, British theater actor Donald Burton, on March 10,1982, and resided in Hampstead, London, in the 1980s.

Carroll Baker resided mainly in New York City and Los Angeles throughout the 1950s and 1960s before relocating to Rome to pursue her career there.

Carroll Baker was mainly based in Palm Springs, California, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

Carroll Baker was photographed by Andy Warhol in 1975 as part of his Polaroid portrait series, and is mentioned in his published diaries.

Carroll Baker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1725 Vine Street, which was erected on February 8,1960.