Stanley Baker was unusual star material to emerge during the Fifties – when impossibly handsome and engagingly romantic leading men were almost de rigour. Baker was forged from a rougher mould. His was good-looking, but his features were angular, taut, austere and unwelcoming. His screen persona was taciturn, even surly, and the young actor displayed a predilection for introspection and blunt speaking, and was almost wilfully unromantic. For the times a potential leading actor cast heavily against the grain. Baker immediately proved a unique screen presence - tough, gritty, combustible – and possessing an aura of dark, even menacing power.

Stanley Baker came from rugged Welsh mining stock – and as a lad was unruly, quick to flare, and first to fight. But like his compatriot and friend Richard Burton, the young Baker was rescued from a gruelling life of coal mining by a local teacher, Glyn Morse, who recognised in the proud and self-willed lad a potent combination of a fine speaking voice, a smouldering intensity, and a strong spirit. And like Burton, Stanley Baker was specially and specifically tutored for theatrical success. In fact, early on, Burton and Baker appeared together on stage as juveniles in The Druid’s Rest, in Cardiff, in Wales. But later, by way of Birmingham Repertory Theatre and then the London stage, Stanley Baker charted his inevitable course toward the Cinema.

Film welcomed the adult Baker as the embodiment of evil. Memorable early roles cast the actor in feisty unsympathetic parts – from the testy bosun in Captain Horatio Hornblower to his modern-day counterpart in The Cruel Sea, to the arch villains in Hell Below Zero and Campbell's Kingdom to the dastardly Mordred in Knights of the Round Table and the wily Achilles in Helen of Troy. For a time there was a distillation of Baker’s screen persona in a series of roles as stern and uncompromising policemen – in Violent Playground, _Blind Date (1958)_ , and Hell Is a City. But despite never having been cast as a romantic leading man, and being almost wholly associated with villainous roles, Stanley Baker nevertheless became a star by dint of his potent personality.

Although now enthroned by enthusiastic audiences Stanley Baker was obviously aware he need not desert unsympathetic parts - and his relish in playing the scheming Astaroth in The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah and the unscrupulous mobster Johnny Bannion in The Concrete Jungle was readily evident. But soon there were more principled, if still surly characters, in The Guns of Navarone, The Games, Eva, and Accident, the latter two films reuniting Baker with the American ex-patriot director of The Criminal, Joseph Losey. Stanley Baker also established a fruitful working relationship with the Canadian director Cy Endfield, following their early collaboration on Hell Drivers. When Baker inaugurated his own film production company – it was Endfield he commissioned to write and direct both Zulu and Sands of the Kalahari, with Baker allotting himself the downbeat roles of the martinet officer John Chard in Zulu and the reluctant hero Mike Bain in The Sands Of The Kalahari.

Baker must have felt more assured in disenchanted roles – as further films from Baker’s own stable still promoted the actor in either criminal or villainous mode – as gangster Paul Clifton in Robbery and the corrupt thief-taker Jonathan Wild in Where's Jack?. The success of Baker’s own productions was timely and did much to enhance the prestige of what was then considered an ailing British film industry. Stanley Baker also took the opportunity to move into the realm of television, appearing in, among other productions, the dramas _Changeling, The (1974) (TV)_ and _Robinson Crusoe (1974) (TV)_ , and also in the series How Green Was My Valley.

Knighted in 1976 it was evident that Stanley Baker may well have continued to greater heights, both as an actor and a producer, but he succumbed to lung cancer and died at the early age of forty-nine. But his legacy is unquestioned. He was a unique force on screen, championing characterisations that were not clichéd or compromised. He established his own niche as an actor content to be admired for peerlessly portraying the disreputable and the unsympathetic. In that he was a dark mirror, more accurately reflecting human frailty and the vagaries of life than many of his more romantically or heroically inclined contemporaries. There have forever been legions of seemingly interchangeable charming and virile leading men populating the movies – but Stanley Baker stood almost alone in his determination to be characterised and judged by portraying the bleaker aspects of the human condition. Consequently, more than twenty-five years after his death, his sombre, potent personality still illuminates the screen in a way few others have achieved.


Awarded a knighthood in Harold Wilson's resignation Honour's List in June 1976. At the time his knighthood was announced, Baker thought he had beaten his lung cancer following surgery in February of that year. However, although the tumour in his lung had been removed, it had spread into his chest and attached itself to his heart. Since no further surgery was possible, he had only a maximum of nine weeks to live anyway. Three weeks after the announcement of his knighthood, Baker was hospitalized in Spain with pneumonia. As he had died without making the journey to be formally knighted at Buckingham Palace, he cannot be referred to as Sir Stanley, but Queen Elizabeth II agreed that his widow Ellen Martin could use the title "Lady Baker". He was warned not to address a CND rally prior to the release of Zulu (1964), in case his left-wing political activism hurt the film's performance in the United States. In November 2006 a Lounge dedicated to his life and work was opened by his widow, Lady Ellen Baker and his sons at Ferndale Rugby club in the village of his birth. At the time of his death he had been planning to play a rapist in a film, with his Zulu (1964) co-star Michael Caine playing a detective. His wife Ellen and Richard Burton believed Baker's performance in "How Green Was My Valley" (1975) was so good because he was playing his own father. He formed Diamond Films for the making of Zulu (1964). And later Oakhurst Productions. With the success of The Criminal (1960), Baker all but displaced his polar opposite Dirk Bogarde to become Britain's most popular star. However, Zulu (1964) was his last huge success. His career was damaged by the commercial failure of Sands of the Kalahari (1965) and Robbery (1967), although the latter received favourable reviews. His father lost a leg in an accident in the mine and was thereafter unemployed until the Second World War took men away into the services. His elder brother Freddie, a miner, died of pneumoconiosis early in 1976 after many years of debilitation and sickness. He had intended to produce Zulu Dawn (1979). He was a close friend of his Violent Playground (1958) co-star Gordon Jackson, who attended his memorial service in Ferndale. Although born in Wales, Baker spent most of his formative years in England since his parents moved to London in the mid-1930s.