Don Ameche

Ameche has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6101 Hollywood Boulevard. This serial was directed by Martin Campbell, who also cast Baker as Wade in GoldenEye. His final scenes for the film Corrina, Corrina (1994) were completed only days before his death in Scottsdale, Arizona from prostate cancer. The character of Wade is similar to that of CIA agent Darius Jedburgh, played by Baker in the 1985 BBC Television serial Edge of Darkness. Ameche's next role, in Cocoon (1985), won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and he continued working for the rest of his life (including a role in the sequel, Cocoon: The Return). He is one of six actors to have played two separate roles in the official James Bond cinema franchise, preceded by Charles Gray, Walter Gotell, Jeremy Bulloch, Maud Adams, and Robert Brown. The actors played rich brothers intent on ruining an innocent man for the sake of a bet and the film's great success, and their acclaimed comedic performances, brought them both back into the limelight. In 1995 and 1997 Baker returned to the Bond franchise, this time playing a different character, Jack Wade, in GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies with Pierce Brosnan as Bond.

For three decades he was virtually absent from films, until he was cast alongside fellow veteran actor Ralph Bellamy in the film Trading Places in 1983. In 1987, Baker got the role of the villain Brad Whitaker in the Bond film The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton as James Bond. By the end of the decade his films had lost appeal, and he turned to radio where he achieved great success during the fifties playing opposite Frances Langford in The Bickersons. Baker appeared as Captain Tom Duggan, a retired police captain who filled in while O'Connor's character was away at a police convention. He was so associated with his role as Bell that for a time, "Ameche" was slang for telephone. While actor Carroll O'Connor was undergoing heart bypass surgery, Baker took his place on the television series In the Heat of the Night. He appeared successfully in such films as Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), as Alexander Graham Bell in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939) and Heaven Can Wait (1943). Baker was reportedly incensed by his portrayal as an ignorant redneck in these episodes, allegedly at one point threatening to assault the writers of the show.

He made his film debut in 1935 and by the late thirties had established himself as a leading actor in Hollywood. Joe Don Baker appeared in a couple of films that were eventually lampooned on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 television series. This included the films Mitchell and Final Justice. Born Dominic Felix Amici in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Ameche began his career in vaudeville with Texas Guinan until Guinan dropped him from the act, dismissing him as "too stiff". He would later star as the main character in the 1973 film Walking Tall, a film that was remade in 2004 starring The Rock. Don Ameche (May 31, 1908 - December 6, 1993) was an American actor. Baker got his start in acting as an uncredited character in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, but his real beginnings came when he scored the role of Steve McQueen's younger brother in the film Junior Bonner. Joe Don Baker (born February 12, 1936 in Groesbeck, Texas) is an American film actor best known for his three appearances in the James Bond franchise.

The Commission (2003). Joe Dirt (2001). Mars Attacks! (1996). Panther (1995).

Congo (1995) — an adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel Congo. Reality Bites (1994). Cape Fear (1991). Fletch (1985).

The Natural (1984). Framed (1975).