Wayne Baker joins Sunny Ray to trace his path from championship lacrosse player to working Hollywood actor. Raised in the Squamish Nation on Vancouver's North Shore, Baker won four Canadian lacrosse championships between 1985 and 2001 while battling and overcoming addiction. Watching movies as a kid, he rarely saw Native characters portrayed as anything but stereotypes, until films like Little Big Man and Dances with Wolves inspired him to pursue acting at age 39. He built a career through North of 60, Da Vinci's Inquest, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and more recently HBO's Welcome to Derry and the lead role in Cape Tain, a film shot in Inuktitut in northern Quebec. Baker discusses learning languages for roles, surviving the SAG strike over AI concerns, raising seven children including a daughter now following him into acting, and his hope to one day portray legendary Native American historical figures. He reflects on a career that quietly built for two decades before accelerating dramatically in the last five years.
A four time lacrosse champion from the Squamish Nation on turning childhood movie nights into a late blooming Hollywood career.
Can you tell us about your lacrosse career and how you became a champion?
I grew up in Vancouver and got into lacrosse around age 11. I fell in love with the game and eventually played at the highest senior level, winning four Canadian championships in 1985, 1993, 1999, and 2001. Lacrosse actually helped pull me through a period of heavy drinking and partying in my mid twenties. I quit the booze, kept playing at a high level, and didn't stop until I was 43.
What was childhood like growing up in the Squamish Nation on the North Shore?
I was lucky, we grew up on the waterfront across from Stanley Park, always on the beach fishing, with wild cherries, plums and apples around us. There were maybe five families down there. At 11 we moved up to Upper Capilano, where I got into lacrosse and started meeting more cousins and relatives. Our favorite pastime was catching the bus into Vancouver to watch matinee movies, sometimes two in one day.
You mentioned rarely seeing people like yourself in the movies you watched. Can you talk about that?
We were always depicted as warriors and killers getting shot off horses and called savages, so your heroes ended up being guys like John Wayne instead. It was embarrassing. Little Big Man with Chief Dan George was the first film that really showed the human side of our culture, and then Dances with Wolves came along. That's when the seed got planted for me to try acting myself.
What did it take physically to play lacrosse at that elite level for so long?
No drinking, no smoking, no drugs. I did a lot of running on hills and logging roads in the mountains around Vancouver rather than weight training, just building my wind so I could run the floor forever. I did that every summer and played at a high level until I was 43. When acting came along, I found the same nervous energy and preparation, like getting ready in a dressing room before a big game.
What was filming Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee like?
That was one of the toughest ones because I was supposed to sing a hip hop version of Jesus Lover of My Soul and had no idea how. I was panicking on set until I asked an old Lakota language teacher if she knew the song, and she sang it for me right there. For another song they never sent me the material in time, so I just wrote my own and performed that instead.
Do you think about AI in the acting industry?
I do, that's actually why we went on strike, since I'm a SAG actor too. I was literally on my way to film Welcome to Derry when the strike call came, and I didn't go back to work for nine months. AI was one of the main issues, and we all voted against it.
How does being a father of seven influence your work?
My kids keep me grounded, I've got sons in Vancouver in their teens, twenties and thirties, and a younger son and stepdaughters out here. One of my daughters is now getting into acting too, she played a Warrior on Welcome to Derry and we did a SAG short together in Utica, New York. I'm also always out fishing and doing construction with my boys.
What advice would you give your younger self starting out?
Take it seriously and be professional about it, but don't give up. Take small steps at first to make sure you really want it and can handle it, and if you get the opportunity, that's more power to you.
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