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Diane Baker (born February 25, 1938 in Hollywood, California) is an American actress who has appeared in motion pictures and on television since 1959.

Early Life and Career

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. She starred the same year in Journey To The Center of the Earth with James Mason and The Best of Everything.

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 'Fifties and early 'Sixties includes appearances on Follow the Sun, Bus Stop, Adventures in Paradise, The Lloyd Bridges Show, The Nurses and Route 66.

The 'Sixties and Beyond

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 (film), 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 emerged back on the big screen in The Silence of the Lambs (1992). 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.

External links

• her web site

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