A rugged, burly character actor with a deceptively benign Southern twang, Texas-born Joe Don Baker made his Broadway debut in "Marathon 33" (1963) and followed with a critically-acclaimed performance in James Baldwin's "Blues For Mister Charlie" (1964), directed by Burgess Meredith. His first feature film appearance came as Fixer in "Cool Hand Luke" (1967), but he really attracted attention as Steve McQueen's wheeler-dealer brother in Sam Peckinpah's "Junior Bonner" (1972). Baker's most memorable turn came as the real-life avenging Sheriff Buford Pusser in the excessively violent and melodramatic "Walking Tall" (1973). That same year, he was cast as a Mafia hood opposite Walter Matthau's small-time bank robber in "Charley Varrick". After a turn as a fictionalized Babe Ruth, called 'The Whammer' in "The Natural" (1984), Baker returned to familiar ground playing lawmen in features like "Fletch" (1985), in which he was a crooked sheriff, "The Killing Time" (1987) and "The Grass Harp" (1995).

Baker starred as NYC Chief of Detectives Earl Eischied in the NBC miniseries "To Kill a Cop" (1978) and then reprised the role in the short-lived spin-off "Eischied" (NBC, 1979-80). His hulking CIA agent drew raves on the other side of the Atlantic in the BBC miniseries thriller "Edge of Darkness" (1986), and he returned to the familiar guise of sheriff for "The Abduction of Kari Swenson" (NBC, 1987). Baker portrayed Claude Kersek, the private investigator hired to protect the Bowden family from Max Cady (Robert De Niro), in the Martin Scorsese remake of "Cape Fear" (1991) and he got to be a trailer-trash dad in Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks!" (1996). The small screen also gave him the chance to portray two historical characters, Senator Joe McCarthy in the HBO movie "Citizen Cohn" (1992) and Big Jim Folsom in the TNT miniseries "George Wallace" (1997).