Robert Blake : Biography, Pictures, Photos, Trivia, Address, Filmography (Baretta)

Born at 8:30am EDT.

Walked away from his career 1986-93.

Blake's father, James Gubitosi, was a blacksmith for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) with show business aspirations. He eventually quit the WPA and started a song and dance act with his wife, Elizabeth Gubitosi. He eventually added their three children to the act, billing them as "The Three Little Hillbillies". In 1938, he took them to Los Angeles, where the couple worked as a gardener and a maid while trying to get work for their children. Blake said neither parent was loving. His father spent every cent his son earned and beat him as he descended into alcoholism.

He received accolades for his performance as a killer who goes to the gallows in 1967's In Cold Blood (1967), and he won a 1975 Emmy for Baretta (1975) (TV), but his career had been stalled for years.

After over a year following her death, he was arrested for the murder of his wife Bonnie Lee Bakley. He was acquitted on 16th March 2005. Eight months later, however, in a rebuke to the jury in the criminal case, a jury in a civil suit brought on behalf of her children found Blake liable for the murder and ordered him to pay over $30 million in damages.

Almost had the role of Jim Rockford on "The Rockford Files" (1974), but Stephen J. Cannell thought that, since Rockford didn't like to fight, the diminuitive Blake would have seemed too cowardly in the role.

To prepare for the role of Hannibal Lecter, Anthony Hopkins had watched Blake's performance in In Cold Blood (1967) several times (Hopkins said this having visited Blake, whom he didn't know personally, in prison after being accused of murdering his wife).

Passed on Ratzo Ritzo in Midnight Cowboy (1969), and lost out on a role in The Godfather (1972) (presumably in the role of Michael or Sonny). He also turned down the role of Angel in The Wild Bunch (1969).

Appears in the film Lost Highway (1997), about a man who murders his wife. It was inspired, according to David Lynch, by the O.J. Simpson case. Blake later became the centre of another high-profile wife-killing case in real life.

Although he is of Italian descent, for many years he specialised in playing either Latino characters or Native Americans.