Shadowing Practice: What Happened To Simon Baker After The Mentalist? - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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This is Simon Baker in an interview from 2008, trying to convince people to give The Mentalist a chance.
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He has no idea just how big it would get, or how beloved his character, Patrick Jane, would become.
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He has no idea this is the role he'll always be remembered for.
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Seven seasons later, in 2015, the show ends, and instead of his career taking off the way everyone expected, he just seemed to disappear.
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So what happened to Simon Baker after The Mentalist, and why haven't we seen more of him since?
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To answer that, you have to go back all the way to the beginning.
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Simon Baker was born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1969, though he barely spent any time there.
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His family moved to Papua New Guinea, and then his parents split up.
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His mother remarried a butcher named Tom Denny, and the family eventually settled in Lenox Head, a small coastal town on Australia's east coast.
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He said he didn't grow up with money, but he grew up with a lot of space, right next to the ocean, which is where his obsession with surfing comes from.
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Before acting was on the table, he worked a few jobs around Australia, mixing cement as a laborer, washing dishes, working in pubs.
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He said that bouncing between all those jobs ended up being useful later, since it taught him how to read and slip into all kinds of different people.
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No, I used to work in pubs in Australia.
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You did?
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Yeah, that was kind of my acting school, really.
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Some of the shenanigans that you see.
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Then a friend talked him into auditioning for a role, and that's how his acting career actually started.
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He landed a part on the soap opera E Street in the early 90s, followed by Home and Away, and in 1993 he won a Logi Award,
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Australia's biggest television honor for most popular new talent.
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That was enough to get him noticed
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and not long after he made the move to the United States to try his luck in Hollywood.
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His breakthrough came with a small role in LA Confidential in 1997.
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Just a few minutes of screen time was enough to show his talent and put him on the radar.
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Over the next decade he built a solid name for himself.
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He wasn't a massive star yet but he was a working actor who kept landing good roles.
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He played a key part in Ride with the Devil, took the lead in The Ring 2
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and played the hero in Land of the Dead then in
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2006 he landed one of his most recognizable roles playing christian
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thompson in the devil wears prada he'd also proven he could
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lead a show from 2001 to 2004 he starred in the
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guardian playing a corporate lawyer sentenced to over a thousand hours
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of community service after a drug conviction the performance was strong enough to earn him his first golden globe nomination
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by 2008 simon baker had landed the role of his life
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patrick jane in the mentalist a former fake psychic who now solves crimes by reading people.
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What made Jane so easy to like was how Simon chose to play him.
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He could have gone dark with the character, he could have played up the grief and the manipulation, but he didn't.
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He kept it light.
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You could tell Jane was actually enjoying himself, which made it easy for everyone else to enjoy him too.
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He was always a step ahead of everyone else, but it never felt mean, mostly because of that smile he always had on.
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He'd lie straight to someone's face, playing them completely, and he'd just smile through it like was the most fun he'd had all day.
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It softened every trick he pulled, so the viewers never stopped being on his side.
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People genuinely liked spending time with this character.
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The recognition followed fast.
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In 2009, just one season in, Baker picked up an Emmy nomination.
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Simon Baker, The Mentalist.
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The following year, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Drama.
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He also won multiple People's Choice Awards for Favorite TV Drama Actor over the show's run, which says a lot about how audiences felt about him.
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And in February 2013, right in the middle of the show's run, he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Walking down here and seeing all these names, and I never imagined that my name would be one of those names.
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I just, it didn't even enter my mind.
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After The Mentalist ended, everyone expected Simon Baker's career to keep climbing, but that's not what happened.
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Being the lead of a series running 20 -plus episodes a year isn't easy, and Patrick Jane was in almost every scene, which led to Simon working 12, sometimes 14 hours a day,
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five days a week, for the better part of a decade.
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Somewhere in all of that, he started noticing what it was costing him at home.
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It's been an exciting and an interesting period of time, but ultimately our family's become really close because of it,
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because we've kind of been fixed address for a little while.
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He was splitting his time between Los Angeles and Australia while the show filmed, watching his kids grow up mostly through visits and phone calls instead of actually being there.
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So when the show ended, he didn't chase the next big role.
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He said he was looking forward to spending more time at home
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and that dedicating himself to his family mattered more than anything else.
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He'd already worked hard enough as a younger actor to provide for his family
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and he just wasn't as hungry for work anymore.
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Back in Australia, Simon felt the need to help the film industry that first believed in him.
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He directed a film called Breath, an adaptation of a novel about two teenage surfers and it did well enough to win him the Best Director Award.
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From there, he kept showing up in smaller and more personal films, the kind of projects that never made headlines in the U .S., but let him work as an actor,
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producer, and director without the pressure of being the face of a hit show.
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I finished The Mentalist, I went back to Australia, I did a couple of, did a few jobs in Australia to sort of support my industry there.
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And then this came up and I thought, you know what, it's been a while.
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And now, over a decade after The Mentalist, Simon's returning to a major Hollywood role in a new series.
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It's starting to look like the comeback everyone expected years ago might finally be happening.
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That's what makes Simon Baker so special.
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He had one of the biggest shows on television, and instead of chasing the next big thing, he walked away from it.
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For his kids.
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For time, he knew he couldn't get back.
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That's not the move people expect from someone at the height of their career.
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Fame doesn't usually get put on hold, but his did, and over a decade later, it's hard not to see that choice as the right one.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 76 sentences and 1195 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:37. The speaker talks fast, about 213 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| baker noun | /ˈbeɪ.kɚ/ | A person who bakes and sells bread, cakes and similar items. |
| jane noun | /d͡ʒeɪn/ | A female client of a prostitute. |
| chase verb | /t͡ʃeɪs/ | To follow at speed. |
| devil noun | /ˈdɛvəl/ | An evil creature, the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. |
| globe noun | /ɡloʊb/ | The eyeball. |
| pub noun | /pʌb/ | A public house where beverages, primarily alcoholic, may be bought and consumed, also providing food and sometimes entertainment such as live music or… |
| nomination noun | /ˌnɑmɪˈneɪʃən/ | An act or instance of nominating. |
| earn verb | /ɝn/ | To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work. |
| trick noun | /ˈtɹɪk/ | Something designed to fool, dupe, outsmart, mislead or swindle. |
| recognition noun | /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/ | The act of recognizing or the condition of being recognized (matching a current observation with a memory of a prior observation of the same entity). |
| wash verb | /wɑʃ/ | To clean with water. |
| hungry adjective | /ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/ | Affected by hunger; having the physical need for food. |
| producer noun | /pɹəˈdjuːsə/ | An individual or organization that creates goods and services. |
| solve verb | /sɒlv/ | To find an answer or solution to a problem or question; to work out. |
| settle verb | /ˈsɛtəl/ | To determine (something which was exposed to doubt or question); to resolve conclusively; to set or fix (a time, an order of succession, etc). |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| get back verb | Return to where one came from. |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. |
| look forward to verb | To anticipate, expect, or wait for, especially with a feeling of approval or pleasure; to be excited or eager to. |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be remembered · was born · was nominated |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | haven't we seen · It's been |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 17 contractions and reduced forms, such as he'd, didn't, wasn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: nomination /ˌnɑmɪˈneɪʃən/, recognition /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/, wash /wɑʃ/, dish /dɪʃ/, conviction /kənˈvɪkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: nomination /ˌnɑmɪˈneɪʃən/, recognition /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, adaptation /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/, manipulation /məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like baker, jane, chase.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.