Carroll Baker

Carroll Baker is a former American film, stage, and television actress. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Bakers range of roles from naive ingenues to brash and flamboyant women established her as both a serious dramatic actress and a blonde bombshell. While performing on Broadway in 1954, she was recruited by director Elia Kazan to play the lead in Tennessee Williamss Baby Doll . Her role in the film as a sexuallyrepressed Southern bride lent Baker overnight notoriety and earned her BAFTA and Academy Award nominations for Best Actress, as well as a Golden Globe award for Most Promising Newcomer that year.

Carroll Baker was born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in a Roman Catholic family, the daughter of Virginia and William Watson Baker, who was a traveling salesman. She is of Polish descent, which has given rise to a rumor that her birth name was Karolina Piekarski. However, this currently cannot be substantiated by known records. Bakers 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.

Source: Wikipedia