Diane Baker
From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki
- born: 25/Feb/1938 (Hollywood, California, USA)
Biography
Diane Baker is an American actress who has appeared in motion pictures and on television since 1959.
Born and raised in Hollywood, she moved to New York at age 18 to study acting with Charles Conrad and ballet with Nina Fonaroff. Securing a contract with Twentieth Century Fox, she made her film debut when she was chosen by director George Stevens to play "Margot Frank" in the 1959 motion picture "The Diary of Anne Frank". In the same year, she starred in "Journey to the Center of the Earth" with James Mason and in "The Best of Everything" with Hope Lange and Joan Crawford.
Other Fox films in which Baker appeared include the assassination thriller "Nine Hours To Rama", "Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man" and "The 300 Spartans". Her television work in the late 1950s and early '60s includes appearances on "Follow the Sun", "Bus Stop", "Adventures in Paradise", "The Lloyd Bridges Show", "The Nurses" and "Route 66".
Finally out of her contract with Fox after starring in 1960 in the fourth screen version of Grace Miller White's novel "Tess of the Storm Country", Baker appeared in "Stolen Hours", a 1963 remake of "Dark Victory", and, the same year, opposite Paul Newman and Elke Sommer in "The Prize". In 1964, she costarred with Joan Crawford in both the William Castle-directed thriller about an axe murderess, "Strait-Jacket", and in an unsold television pilot "Royal Bay", released to theaters as Della. Alfred Hitchcock cast her in his 1964 film "Marnie" as the sister-in-law of Sean Connery. In 1965, she co-starred with Gregory Peck and Walter Matthau in "Mirage", directed by Edward Dmytryk.
In the decades after "Mirage", she appeared frequently on television and began producing films including the 1985 miniseries "A Woman of Substance". She reemerged on the big screen in "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991). She also appeared in the films "The Joy Luck Club", "The Cable Guy", "The Net" and "A Mighty Wind". She guest starred in one episode as the mother of the title character of the hit television series "House" in 2005.
Since August 2004, Baker is the Director of Acting at the School of Motion Pictures and Television at Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
Filmography
With Hitchcock...
- Marnie (1964) - cast: Lil Mainwaring
Other works of note...
- The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) - cast: Margot Frank
- Mirage (1965) - cast: Shela
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - cast: Sen. Ruth Martin
- A Mighty Wind (2003) - cast: Supreme Folk Defense Lawyer
Links
Documentaries
She has appeared in the following Hitchcockian documentaries...
- The Trouble with Marnie (2000)
Image Gallery
Images from the Hitchcock Gallery (click to view larger versions or search for all relevant images)...