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Becky Ann Baker

Becky Ann Baker is the kind of performer who gives a scene an immediate sense of lived-in reality. Working across film, television and the stage, she has built a career around characters who feel grounded, specific and fully present, whether the material calls for everyday warmth, tension or dry humor. Born Becky Ann Gelke in Fort Knox, Kentucky, Baker graduated from West Springfield High School in Virginia and Western Kentucky University. Her stage career includes a Broadway debut in the 1981 production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. She later received a Drama-Logue Award for her work in Night and Her Stars and became a founding member of the New York-based theatre company The Drama Dept. Her film credits span a notably varied group of movies, including Blue Steel, Jacob’s Ladder, Lorenzo’s Oil, Unstrung Heroes, Sabrina, White Squall, Men in Black, In & Out, Celebrity, Two Weeks Notice, War of the Worlds, Stay, The Night Listener and Spider-Man 3. Her performance in Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan earned a Blockbuster Entertainment Award nomination and also helped open an important television door: series creator Paul Feig and Judd Apatow cast her in Freaks and Geeks after seeing her work in the film. That series became one of the defining television credits in a career that also includes Girls, Stephen King’s Storm of the Century and Kings, in which she played Jessie Shepherd. Baker has also appeared in episodes of Frasier, Star Trek: Voyager, Sex and the City, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Oz and All My Children. Rather than belonging to one genre or format, Baker’s career is a study in durable character acting. From Broadway productions to studio films and closely observed television, she brings the same essential quality: the sense that her character had a life before the camera arrived.