Whatever Happened To The Mentalist Actor Simon Baker?

Remember "The Mentalist"? Of course you do. In an era when procedural crime television was a more crowded genre than ever, the seven-season CBS drama put itself above the competition. For its time and place, the show was a bit more high-concept than was typical, due in part to the sensibilities of creator and showrunner Bruno Heller, who also co-created the groundbreaking HBO epic "Rome."

If you didn't catch the show back in the day, and you haven't gone back for a binge in the decade since it left the air, "The Mentalist" follows the exploits of former con-man and pseudo-psychic Patrick Jane, plated with peak charisma and poise by Australian actor Simon Baker. Working as a police consultant, Jane pursues the serial killer known as Red John who murdered his wife and daughter.

Think of it as "Psych," but an actual drama instead of a crime comedy — strange coincidence given that the shows overlapped on TV for a number of years. While Baker earned major fame for his performance, even receiving a Primetime Emmy nomination in 2009 (losing out to Bryan Cranston for "Breaking Bad"), he hasn't been quite so active since "The Mentalist" wrapped up in 2015. However, if you haven't seen him lately, you may have just been looking in the wrong places. Baker has appeared in a number of lower-profile movies and shows in the last 10 years, including the 2022 Apple TV+ anthology series "Roar," Netflix's "Boy Swallows World" in 2024, and a bunch of projects produced in his native Australia.

His accent in "The Mentalist," as well as in Hollywood films like "Margin Call" and "The Devil Wears Prada," is so convincing that many American fans might not even realize that Simon Baker is Australian. But since the show ended in 2015, he's worked almost exclusively back in his home country on a broad range of movies and shows.

Just two years after the "Mentalist" finale, in 2017, Baker directed, co-wrote, and starred in the Australian surfacing drama film "Breath." He followed up that multi-talented turn by executive-producing other Aussie films like the 2020 historical drama "High Ground" and the 2023 thriller "Limbo," both of which also star Baker on screen. In the middle, he made it back to Hollywood in 2018 to star opposite Sarah Jessica Parker in "Here and Now," and he's set to do so again in Taika Waititi's upcoming adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's sci-fi novel "Klara and the Sun."

On television, Baker has also mostly worked in Australia since "The Mentalist," though some of those have gotten more international attention via streaming releases. These include the aforementioned "Boy Swallows World," as well as the 2025 Prime Video miniseries "The Narrow Road to the Deep North," led by rising Hollywood superstar Jacob Elordi.

In a 2025 profile for Esquire Australia, Baker discussed how much he enjoyed moving back to Australia in 2016 after his obligations on "The Mentalist" wrapped up. "When I lived in the States, I was often asked what I missed most about it here," he told the outlet. "And the immediate, visceral feeling was, you know, how I felt on a rainy morning at the end of March. It was the smell of the ocean, those things." He explained that returning home was "grounding" for him, which is likely a big part of why most of his work since then has been on Australian soil. The other part was a desire to simply be an actor, rather than a star, with all of the extra demands and baggage that major fame brings.

"Most of the big stars these days are pretty good at being famous," Baker told Esquire Australia. "I was never really able to do that. I never felt completely confident throwing myself into it completely, and going, 'I'm gonna be a big, bright, shining star, and I'm going to do the things that you have to do'."

In the same interview, Baker explained that he stepped out of the spotlight intentionally after "The Mentalist" to give his career some room to breathe. That decision led to the sort of work he's been doing for years now, and to hear him tell it, he's happier than ever.