Blanche Baker

Blanche Baker is an American actress born Blanche Garfein on December 20, 1956, in New York City. She is the daughter of actress Carroll Baker and director Jack Garfein, who survived imprisonment at Auschwitz and was originally from Mukachevo in Carpathian Ruthenia. Her mother was a Roman Catholic who converted to Judaism. Baker has a younger brother, Herschel Garfein. Much of her early childhood was spent in Italy, where her mother built a film career after departing Hollywood in the mid-1960s. She attended the American Overseas School of Rome before enrolling at Wellesley College from 1974 to 1976, and subsequently trained at both the Herbert Berghof Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute.

Baker made her television debut as Anna Weiss in the miniseries Holocaust, a role that earned her the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by a Supporting Actress in 1978. Her subsequent television work includes the TV movies Mary and Joseph: A Story of Faith (1979), in which she played Mary, The Day the Bubble Burst (1982), The Awakening of Candra (1983), Embassy (1985), Nobody's Child (1986), and Taking Chance (2009).

Her Broadway career is anchored by her origination of the title role in Edward Albee's stage adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita during the 1980–81 season. The production faced protests during out-of-town tryouts and in New York from feminist groups, including Women Against Pornography, who objected to the play's subject matter. After 31 previews, the show opened on March 19, 1981, and closed following only 12 performances. Despite the production's troubled reception, New York Times critic Frank Rich singled Baker out, writing that she did "a clever job of impersonating the downy nymphet" and deserved "a more substantial stage vehicle soon." People Magazine, which named Albee's Lolita "Broadway's Bomb of the Year" in an April 1981 story, noted that critics were broadly positive about Baker's performance specifically, with reviewers calling her "breathtaking" and "beguiling."

In 1987, Baker originated the role of Shelby in the first Off-Broadway production of Steel Magnolias. Her film work includes a debut in the political drama The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979), followed by Sixteen Candles (1984), in which she played Ginny Baker, Cold Feet (1984), The Girl Next Door (2007), and Taking Chance (2009). In 2012, she produced and starred in a film about Ruth Madoff titled Ruth Madoff Occupies Wall Street.

Baker married film director Bruce vanDusen on October 1, 1983. They had three children together before divorcing in 2002. She remarried in 2003 to Mark McGill, with whom she has one son.