Simon Baker Used 'The Mentalist' As His Film School

Simon Baker suits up for the YWCA’s Mother Of All Black And White Balls on Saturday evening (May 30) in Sydney, Australia.

The 45-year-old Mentalist alum was joined on the carpet by his wife Rebecca Riggs.

Simon recently opened up about his desire to direct.

“I had been working towards wanting to direct when I signed on to The Mentalist. After I did The Guardian, I didn’t want to ever do TV again,” Simon told THR. “I didn’t think that I could handle that kind of grind. But when I signed on to The Mentalist, I made a very conscious decision to use it as a film school. We made 151 hours of TV and it’s sort of the speed dating of film production. You have to pull pieces together at high speed. You have to do the script development, you have to do casting, do location scouting. You are always working with different people. I directed as many of those as I could physically.”

15+ pictures inside of Simon Baker and Rebecca Riggs at the event together…