Philippa Baker

Philippa Baker was born in Sydney, New South Wales, in 1932. She trained for the stage at the Independent Theatre under Doris Fitton, in the same school generation as fellow Australian performer Sheila Kennelly. While starting out she worked as a librarian and fitted radio calls around that job until she was pressed to choose. An Arts Council tour with Twelfth Night Theatre tipped the balance, and she committed fully to acting from 1953.

Baker spent about five years as Scottish nurse Heather in ABC radio's Blue Hills and also appeared in Dr. Paul, placing her among the performers associated with Australia's mid-century radio golden age alongside figures such as Queenie Ashton, Ethel Lang, Gwen Plumb and Thelma Scott.

She moved into television through live ABC plays and guest parts in Crawford police serials including Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police. From 1972 to 1975 she starred in Number 96 as Roma Lubinski, later Roma Godolfus, opposite Johnny Lockwood. The pair filmed the 1974 Number 96 feature, survived a staged mid-run exit, and were written out in the September 1975 bomb blast. In 1976 she joined The Norman Gunston Show's Checkout Chicks sketch and later appeared in The Young Doctors, 1980s telemovies and miniseries, Annie's Coming Out, True Believers (Dame Enid Lyons) and Young Einstein. Stage work across those decades included classic plays from Tennessee Williams, Chekhov and Ibsen. She retired from acting in 1989.

Public accounts of Baker's private life are limited. She was sometimes credited as Phillippa Baker. In interviews she spoke warmly about the early years of shared enthusiasm among young actors, and she once joked about putting on weight for the aged-up Number 96 role of Roma. She left the profession in 1989 after more than three decades of radio, stage and screen work.

Philippa Baker died on 26 September 2026 at the age of 93. Australian television site TV Tonight published a notice on 28 September 2026 announcing her death and summarising her career in Blue Hills, Number 96 and later television. No cause of death was given in that report.

Baker is remembered as part of the bridge between Australian radio drama and the first long-running commercial soaps. Roma and Aldo remain among Number 96's best-loved comedy pairings, and her Blue Hills years link her to a radio tradition that ran for decades. Later credits in True Believers and Young Einstein kept her visible to audiences who never saw the original Number 96 broadcasts.