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Joe Don Baker (born February 12, 1936) is an American character actor, perhaps best known for his roles as a Mafia hitman in Charley Varrick, deputy sheriff Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III in Final Justice, real-life Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser in Walking Tall, brute force with a badge detective Mitchell in Mitchell, James Bond villain Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights, and CIA Agent Jack Wade in the James Bond films GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, and as the brilliant and tough New York City Police Department Chief of Detectives Earl Eischied in television police drama,... MORE

Joe Don Baker (born February 12, 1936) is an American character actor, perhaps best known for his roles as a Mafia hitman in Charley Varrick, deputy sheriff Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III in Final Justice, real-life Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser in Walking Tall, brute force with a badge detective Mitchell in Mitchell, James Bond villain Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights, and CIA Agent Jack Wade in the James Bond films GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, and as the brilliant and tough New York City Police Department Chief of Detectives Earl Eischied in television police drama, Eischied. Baker was born in Groesbeck, Texas, the son of Edna (née McDonald) and Doyle Charles Baker. He attended the University of North Texas. In 1964 he appeared on stage in "Marathon '33" at the ANTA Theatre in New York City. He got his start in acting as an uncredited character in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, and as an illiterate vending machine robber in a 1969 episode of the TV series Mod Squad, but his real beginnings came when he scored the role of Steve McQueen's younger brother in the film Junior Bonner, directed by Sam Peckinpah. He later starred in the 1973 film Walking Tall, directed by Phil LESS