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Dylan Baker

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Dylan Baker

Dylan Baker is an American actor best known for playing supporting roles in both major studio movies and independent films.

Born on October 7, 1959 in Syracuse, New York, Baker was raised in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he began his acting career as a teenager in regional theater productions. He attended Holy Cross High school and graduated from the Georgetown Preparatory School in 1976. He atttended the College of William and Mary in Virginia and later graduated from Southern Methodist in 1980. He then received a Masters in Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama. In 1986, he performed in an off-Broadway production of Not About Heroes, co-starring Edward Herrmann and directed by Diane Wiest, winning an Obie Award for his performance. After graduation, he scored on Broadway in such diverse roles as a yuppie (opposite fellow "Murder One" cast mate Patricia Clarkson) in Richard Greenberg's Eastern Standard (1989) — for which he won a Theater World Award — and as the Prince in the modern verse play La Bête (1991).

He made his film debut in the 1987 John Candy-Steve Martin comedy, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and appeared in the television miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan with Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey the following year. By 1995, he was a regular on the television dramas Feds and Murder One.

Baker first became well-known beyond New York City in 1998 when he appeared in Todd Solondz's ensemble black comedy Happiness, taking on the extremely controversial role of a closeted pedophile who rapes two of his young son's friends. Baker was critically lauded for playing such an unsympathetic role as a three-dimensional human being rather than as a one-sided monster.

In addition to roles in films such as Thirteen Days, Radioland Murders, The Cell, and Kinsey, Baker has also appeared extensively on the Broadway stage and on television, in shows such as Law & Order and the short-lived sitcom The Pitts. He has also appeared in major studio movies such as Spider-Man 2, in which he played Dr. Curt Conners (also known as The Lizard.)

Baker played the role of Satan in Seeing Ear Theatre's production of The History of the Devil. Baker is not only an accomplished actor, but also stage director as well. In the summer of 2006 he directed the Chautauqua Theater Company's production of The Art of Coarse Acting. He also played a priest in "Alter Boys", an episode of CSI. In the short-lived NBC series "The Book of Daniel," Baker played the role of senior warden Roger Paxton.

As a voice actor, Dylan Baker narrated the audiobook for Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, among many others.

In 1990, he married actress Becky Gelke, now known professionally as Becky Ann Baker. They have one child (born 1993) and reside in New York City.

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