Carroll Baker is a former American actress who has enjoyed popularity as both a serious dramatic actress and particularly in the 1960s as a movie sex symbol After studying under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio Baker began performing on Broadway in 1954 From there she was recruited by director Elia Kazan to play the lead in the adaptation of two Tennessee Williams plays into the film Baby Doll in 1956 In the mid1960s as a contract player for Paramount Pictures Baker became a sex symbol after appearing as a hedonistic widow in The Carpetbaggers 1964 The films producer Joseph E Levine cast her in Sylvia before giving her the role of Jean Harlow in the biopic Harlow 1965 Despite significant prepublicity Harlow was a critical failure and Baker relocated to Italy in 1966 amid a legal dispute over her contract with Paramount and Levines overseeing of her career In Europe she spent the next 10 years starring in hardedged giallo and horror films including Romolo Guerrieris The Sweet Body of Deborah 1968 a series of four films with Umberto Lenzi beginning with Orgasmo 1969 and ending with Knife of Ice 1972 and Corrado Farinas Baba Yaga 1973 Baker appeared in supporting roles in several acclaimed dramas in the 1980s including the drama Star 80 1983 as the mother of murder victim Dorothy Stratten and the racial drama Native Son 1986 based on the novel by Richard Wright Through the 1990s Baker had guest roles in several television series such as Murder She Wrote LA Law and Roswell She formally retired from acting in 2003
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