Carroll Baker | May 28 | American Actress

Carroll Baker was born on May 28, 1931 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a traveling salesman, William W. Baker. She attended community college for a year and then worked as a dancer and magician's assistant. After a brief marriage, she had a small part in Easy to Love (1953), did TV commercials, and had a bit part on Broadway. She studied at the Actors Studio and was married to director Jack Garfein (one daughter, Blanche Baker).

Carroll Baker was born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in a Roman Catholic family, the daughter of Edith Gertrude (née Duffy) and William Watson Baker, a traveling salesman.She is of Polish descent,which has given rise to a rumor that her birth name was Karolina Piekarski.[a] However, this currently cannot be substantiated by known records.[b] Baker's parents separated when she was eight years old, and she moved with her mother and younger sister, Virginia, to Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania. According to Baker, her mother struggled as a single parent, and the family was poor for much of her upbringing.

Baker separated from her second husband, Jack Garfein, in 1967, and moved to Europe with her two children to pursue a career there after struggling to find work in Hollywood.Eventually settling in Rome, Italy, Baker became fluent in Italian and spent the next several years starring in hard-edged Italian thrillers, exploitation, and horror films. In 1966, Baker had been invited to the Venice International Film Festival, where she met director Marco Ferreri, who asked her to play the lead role in Her Harem (1967). This was followed with the horror films The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968) and The Devil Has Seven Faces (1971). Baker also starred in So Sweet.So Perverse (1969), Paranoia (1969), A Quiet Place to Kill (1970), and Il coltello di ghiaccio (Knife of Ice) (1972), all horror films directed by Italian filmmaker Umberto Lenzi.

Baker has been married three times: She first married Louie Ritter in 1953, but the marriage ended within a year, after which she enrolled at the Actors Studio in New York City.Baker alleged that Ritter had raped her when she was still a virgin in the early stages of their relationship.Her second was to director Jack Garfein, a Holocaust survivor she met at the Studio and for whom she converted to Judaism (having been raised a Catholic).They had one daughter, Blanche Baker (born 1956),also an actress, and a son, Herschel Garfein (born 1958),who is a composer and faculty member at the Steinhardt School of Music at New York University. Garfein and Baker divorced in 1969. Baker also has six grandchildren.

Baker married her third husband, British theater actor Donald Burton, on March 10, 1978, and resided in Hampstead, London, in the 1980s.The couple remained together until Burton's death from emphysema at their home in Cathedral City, California, on December 8, 2007.

Baker resided mainly in New York City and Los Angeles throughout the 1950s and '60s before relocating to Rome to pursue her career there. Baker was mainly based in Palm Springs, California, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. As of 2016, she resides in New York City. In February 2014, she served as maid of honor at longtime friend and former actor Patrick Suraci's wedding to his partner, Tony Perkins, in New York.