Bond legend dead as family pay touching tribute | | UK News
Joe Don Baker, the Texan actor who had two separate roles in three totally different James Bond films as both a unhealthy and a good man has died at the age of 89, his family confirmed. His death occured onMay 7, but is only being made public now. As we are saying goodbye to Joe Don, we maintain onto the recollections and the love he shared with us. Though he might no longer be with us in physique, his spirit will at all times stay, a guiding mild in the lives he touched. Rest in peace, Joe Don. You will probably be dearly missed but never forgotten,” his obituary read.
The star played two roles over three movies in the James Bond franchise. He was the villain Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights which starred Timothy Dalton in the titular role. He then switched to the good guys playing CIA agent Jack Wade, in both GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies which starred Pierce Brosnan as the iconic spy.
He also appeared in Tim Burton’s 1996 sci-fi classic Mars Attacks which saw him once again appear opposite Bond alumni Pierce Brosnan and also Tom Jones, who had sang the Bond theme Thunderball for the film of the smae name in 1965.
He got his start in 1972 when he starred as the younger, business-minded brother of an aging Arizona rodeo rider played by Steve McQueen in Sam Peckinpah’s Junior Bonner. He then portrayed a sadistic mob hitman named Molly in Don Siegel’s 1973 film Charley Varrick, starring opposite Walter Matthau.
He won huge acclaim for his role in 1973’s Walking Tall playing a character called Buford based on a real-life sheriff who cleaned up crime in his Tennessee town .
“In those days in the early ’70s, I think a lot of people wanted to take a stick to Nixon and all those Watergate guys,” he said in an interview from the mid-1990s. He added the film “touched a vigilante nerve in everybody who would like to do in the bad guys but don’t have the power and would get in trouble if [they] did. But Buford was able to pull it off.”
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