Joe Don Baker is an American film actor perhaps best known for his role as real-life Tennessee sheriff "Buford Pusser" in the American film classic Walking Tall. 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, directed by Sam Peckinpah. He later starred as the main character in the hugely successful 1973 film Walking Tall, directed by legendary filmmaker Phil Karlson (Baker also starred in the auteur's final film, "Framed", two years later). Baker was offered a cameo in the remake (which had nothing to do with Sheriff Pusser) and declined the offer.

Perhaps it is his work in director Don Siegel's ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "Madigan", "Dirty Harry") 1973 minor-masterpiece "Charley Varrick", that remains Baker's most critical success. Baker was praised for his courageous and offbeat portrait of the sadistic hitman Molly. The film starred Walter Matthau as the eponymous Charley Varrick, and won a British Academy Award.

Although lampooned on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 television series: Mitchell and Final Justice, Baker has performances in a career spanning four decades.

In 1980 Baker became the first actor to receive $1,000,000 to star in a television series--the short lived police drama Eischeid where he played Chief Earl Eischeid. In 1985 he portrayed the corrupt key villain Chief Jerry Karlin in the Chevy Chase hit Fletch.

While actor Carroll O'Connor was undergoing heart bypass surgery, Baker took his place on the television series In the Heat of the Night. Baker appeared as Captain Tom Duggan, a retired police captain who filled in while O'Connor's character was away at a police convention.

In 1987, Baker got the role of the villain Brad Whitaker in the Bond film The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton as James Bond. In 1995 and 1997 Baker returned to the series, this time playing a different character, the slovenly and dim-witted CIA agent Jack Wade, in GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies with Pierce Brosnan as Bond. He is one of nine actors to have played two separate roles in the official James Bond cinema series, preceded by Charles Gray, Marc Lawrence, Walter Gotell, Jeremy Bulloch, Maud Adams, Burt Kwouk, Anthony Dawson, Tsai Chin and Robert Brown(though Brown is disputed, as his M and Admiral Hargreaves were never officially declared two separate people.)

The character of Wade is similar to that of CIA agent Darius Jedburgh, played by Baker in the critically acclaimed 1985 BBC Television serial Edge of Darkness. He was nominated for "Best Actor" by the British Academy Television Awards. This serial was directed by Martin Campbell, who also cast Baker as Wade in GoldenEye. Also, strangely enough Baker was said to have actually tried out for the role of James Bond once for Live and Let Die, but decided to work on other roles.