Amanda Vale

Amanda Baker (previously Baker and Walters, born Vale) is a fictional character in the Australian soap opera Home and Away, portrayed since 30 June 2005 by actress Holly Brisley.

Background
Using her sexuality as bait, Amanda is known as an attention-seeker and master manipulator. She has been known to quickly find people's weaknesses and use them to her advantage. Amanda's constant need for attention was her motivation for becoming an actress and drama teacher. She met Dan Baker (Tim Campbell) when they were students and they soon married and fell pregnant with Ryan (Isaac Gorman), just as Amanda's acting career was taking off. Amanda ultimately decided to move to the United States to try her luck in Hollywood and took Ryan with her.

Storylines
Amanda arrived in Summer Bay in 2005 as the new drama teacher of local high school Summer Bay High, under the guise of building the perfect life for herself and Ryan. She was sacked for misconduct and has caused nothing but trouble for an unfortunate few of Summer Bay residents, including her first lover, Scott Hunter (Kip Gamblin). Her exploits include lying about becoming pregnant to hold onto Scott, and impersonating Hayley to obtain DNA samples to discover baby Noah's true father. After discovering it was Scott and not Kim Hyde (Chris Hemsworth), as everyone else believed, Amanda kept this information to herself, only to be found out by Flynn Saunders (Joel McIlroy) after the baby's birth.

Amanda later chased after Scott's grandfather, the much-older millionaire Graham Walters (Doug Scroope), who she succeeded in marrying at the end of the 2005 season. At the beginning of the 2006 season, Graham found out about Amanda's affair with Josh West (Daniel Collopy), the town mayor at the time, and demanded a divorce before suffering a fatal heart attack. She soon discovered that Josh was cheating on her and dumped him, but Josh was later shot by former school principal Barry Hyde (Ivar Kants). She was initially a suspect in his murder investigation until it was revealed that Barry was the killer.

Upon discovering that her one-time enemy Belle Taylor (Jessica Tovey) is the daughter that she was told died in child birth, Amanda began making an effort to better herself in order to win her daughter back. But having stolen Belle’s boyfriend, Drew Curtis (Bobby Morley), before dumping him, Amanda is focused on regaining Belle’s trust.

Amanda is currently dating Dan's brother, Peter (Nicholas Bishop), and is being stalked by her vengeful sister, Kelli (Alexa Ashton), who recently kidnapped Belle to pay Amanda back for a car accident that they were both involved in some years ago.

An update from the last couple of days on H & A..... Amanda's hens night comes up and Kitty sends Amanda a letter after she was paid by Kelli and Ethan. Kelli thought it was bad but it was just a good luck message. Plus Peters bucks night turns ugly when Dan took them to a new club called "The Rocket Club", plus Martha happened to be dancing nearly nude on the stage and the whole troupe: Brad, Jack, Ric and Dan and went to confront her before Cam through them out of the club. Plus Amandas big day had come at last it was all going well until after they tied the knot then Ethan appeared and he had placed photos under all of their seats. Peter immediatly ran out with Amanda running behind screaming she then tripped over and began to start crying and explaining but Peter kept on walking. Then Drew went to Belles to ask her about the Ethan thing only to find that she knew then it all broke down. Peter found out and Amanda came to rekindle their relationship but it didn't work it ended up in Peter throwing his wedding ring into the water.

After Peter decided to move out of the house. Amanda got really drunk with her sister Kelli and when Ryan rang later that night for Amanda to pick him up. She was going after him and had a car accident. Peter was the other driver.

Amanda has since lost custody of Ryan to Dan and Leah after he nearly drowned on the beach a few weeks after due to Amanda's carelessness.

Amanda is due to return on 29 February 2008 to support Belle and Ryan through Dan's death.