Simon Baker

Simon Baker, an Australian actor, is best known for The Mentalist.

Born on 30 July 1969 in Launceston, Tasmania, he has the Sun in Leo and the Moon in Aquarius, which is close to a contradiction. Leo is the sign the Sun itself rules, so identity sits unusually solid and unusually visible there: confidence, warmth, a natural claim on a room, and a pride that takes criticism as an attack rather than as information. An Aquarius Moon wants something close to the opposite. It handles feeling by stepping back and examining it, is uncomfortable with display, and treats space as a genuine need rather than as a rejection.

Acting is a strange profession for that pair to share. The work asks a person to be looked at for a living, which the Leo half is built for, and then asks them to open up on cue, which the Aquarius half will do thoughtfully and would rather not do at all. What the combination tends to produce is somebody very watchable who keeps a part of himself back from the watching, and on screen that reserve looks like depth rather than like absence. The rest of the chart agrees with the Aquarius half: air signs take four of his ten planets and only one sits in water, so thinking a thing through rather than feeling it out runs right the way down. Five of the ten are in fixed signs, the arrangement of a person who, once a position is taken, keeps it.

Five planets in fixed signs is somebody who does not move once a position is taken, and that is the quality that outlasts a career built on being looked at. A chart like this gets steadier rather than louder. What suits it now is work that lets him be watched without being asked to open up, which is a narrower door than it was at thirty and a better one.