Dylan Baker

Baker was born in Syracuse, New York and raised in Lynchburg, Virginia. He began his acting career as a teenager in regional theater productions. He attended Holy Cross Regional Catholic School, went on to attend Darlington School, and graduated from the Georgetown Preparatory School in 1976.

Baker attended the College of William and Mary in Virginia and later graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1980. He then received a Master's in Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama, where he studied alongside Chris Noth and Patricia Clarkson.{{cite web |url=http://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/dylan-baker/bio/148246 |title=Dylan Baker Biography |website=TV Guide |access-date=2015-01-12}}

Baker's Broadway theatre credits include Eastern Standard, La Bête (for which he received a Tony Award nomination), Mauritius, and God of Carnage. He won an Obie Award in 1986 for his performance in the off-Broadway play Not About Heroes. The next year, he made his motion picture debut in the feature film Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987).

Baker's first recurring TV role was on Steven Bochco's highly acclaimed Murder One (1995). Since then, he has appeared in such TV series as Northern Exposure, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Without a Trace, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The West Wing, and the short-lived sitcom The Pitts.

He garnered major critical attention with his performance as a tormented pedophile in Todd Solondz's Happiness (1998). In 2000, he portrayed Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in Thirteen Days, a historical drama about the Cuban Missile Crisis. He also held a small role in Requiem for a Dream, where he played a doctor who sees Jared Leto's character with a severely infected, rotting arm. In 2002 he portrayed Alexander Rance, an accountant for the Chicago Outfit, in Road to Perdition. He played Dr. Curt Connors in Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007).

During the short-lived 2007 series Drive, Baker played the role of John Trimble, a father with a terminal illness. In 2009, Baker played William Cross in NBC's Kings, in which his wife Becky Ann Baker played Jessie Shepherd, the mother of protagonist David Shepherd. Baker also guest starred in an episode of Monk, playing a theater critic in "Mr. Monk and the Critic". Baker guest starred in the November 2010 House episode "A Pox on Our House". Baker guest starred in the season four finale of Burn Notice as Raines, an old spy friend of Michael's. He reprised the role in the season five premiere, and also permitted his likeness to be used in the Burn Notice graphic novel "A New Day". In 2010, Baker played Hollis B. Chenery in Secretariat.

Baker played Pashto-speaking CIA agent Jerry Boorman in season 4 of the TV series Damages. He guest-starred in "Upper West Side Story" (2012), an episode of the TV series White Collar. He had a recurring role as the father of Katharine McPhee's character Karen Cartwright on the NBC TV series Smash. He appeared in the USA Network miniseries Political Animals (2012). For his performance as Colin Sweeney on The Good Wife, he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2010, 2012, and 2014.{{cite web|url=http://www.emmys.com/nominations/2012/Outstanding%20Guest%20Actor%20In%20A%20Drama%20Series |title=2012 Emmy Nominations |website=Emmys.com |publisher= Academy of Television Arts & Sciences |access-date=2015-01-12}}

Baker performed with Helen Mirren on Broadway in The Audience, a play that depicted meetings between Queen Elizabeth II and important historical figures. Baker played former Prime Minister John Major. The play opened on March 8, 2015.{{cite web| url= http://www.playbill.com/news/article/dylan-baker-and-judith-ivey-will-join-helen-mirren-on-broadway-in-the-audience-336038 |title= Dylan Baker and Judith Levy Will Join Helen Mirren on Broadway in The Audience |website= Playbill.com |access-date=2017-06-15}}

Baker portrays corrupt DEA Agent Bill Peterson in the seventh season on The Mentalist.

In 2016, Baker had a memorable recurring role as deep-cover KGB agent William Crandall, a morally conflicted biological weapons expert, on Season 4 of FX series The Americans.{{cite web |url=https://www.vulture.com/2016/06/dylan-baker-americans-william-crandall-backstory.html |title=Dylan Baker on His Americans Character's Tragic Backstory |date=June 8, 2016 | first= Jackson| last= McHenry |work= Vulture.com |access-date=March 20, 2020}}

In September 2017, it was announced that Baker would be joining the cast of the Showtime drama Homeland for the show's 7th season, as Sen. Sam Paley, a 'maverick' who is leading an excessive investigation of the administration of new President Elizabeth Keane.{{cite web |url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/homeland-adds-dylan-baker-season-7-1044132 |title= 'Homeland' Adds Dylan Baker to Season 7 |date=September 28, 2017 |first= Bryn Elise| last= Sandberg |work= The Hollywood Reporter |access-date=July 15, 2019}}

He starred in the 2020 series Hunters, in which his wife had a supporting role.

Baker is a prolific narrator of audiobooks, from fiction (The Grapes of Wrath, The Corrections) to biographies (Steve Jobs){{cite web|title=Narrator Profile – Dylan Baker|url=http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/gvpages/a1268.shtml|work=AudioFile Magazine |access-date= 2017-06-15}} to Argo.

He received the 2002 Audie Award for Abridged Fiction for his reading of The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. He has also recorded Franzen's 2015 novel Purity.{{cite web|url=https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/narrators/dylan-baker/|title= Spotlight on Narrator Dylan Baker|website=AudioFile Magazine |access-date=15 June 2017}}

Baker married actress Becky Gelke, now known professionally as Becky Ann Baker, in 1990. They have a daughter and reside in New York City.

On September 1, 2015, Baker tried to save the life of his neighbor, Broadway and movie actress and dancer Vivien Eng, after her apartment caught fire in the New York City high-rise where they both lived at the time. Unfortunately, he was driven back by smoke and flames. Firefighters eventually got the seriously injured woman out of the apartment and rushed her to the hospital, where she died two days later.{{Cite news|url=https://variety.com/2015/legit/news/broadway-actress-vivien-eng-dead-apartment-fire-dylan-baker-1201586038/|title=Broadway Actress Dies in Apartment Fire After 'Good Wife' Star's Attempted Rescue|last=Khatchatourian|first=Maane|date=2015-09-04|work=Variety|access-date=2018-05-04|language=en-US}}

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Category:1959 births

Category:American male film actors

Category:American male television actors

Category:American male stage actors

Category:American male musical theatre actors

Category:College of William & Mary alumni

Category:Living people

Category:People from Lynchburg, Virginia

Category:Southern Methodist University alumni

Category:David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University alumni

Category:20th-century American male actors

Category:21st-century American male actors

Category:Male actors from Syracuse, New York

Category:Male actors from Virginia

Category:Georgetown Preparatory School alumni

Category:Darlington School alumni