Alexander Rae "Alec" Baldwin III (born April 3, 1958) is an Emmy- and Academy Award-nominated, and Golden Globe Award-winning, American actor. He is the eldest and most famous of the Baldwin brothers, and has starred in many movies and TV shows.
Biography
Baldwin was born in Massapequa, New York, the son of Carolyn Newcomb and Alexander Rae Baldwin, Jr., a high school history/social studies teacher and American football coach.
Baldwin was raised in a Catholic family of Irish and French descent. He attended Alfred G. Berner High School in Massapequa, Long Island, and played football there under Coach Bob Reifsnyder, who is in the College Football Hall of Fame. Baldwin used to work as a busboy at the famous New York City disco Studio 54.
He attended George Washington University from 1976 to 1979, where he was known as "Alex." After losing a student body president election, he transferred to New York University to study acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute under Elaine Aiken and Geoffrey Horne. He then returned to NYU in 1994 and graduated with a BFA that year.
The other Baldwin brothers, Daniel, William, and Stephen all followed him in becoming actors.
Baldwin's first major role was as Billy Aldrich on the daytime soap opera The Doctors from 1980 to its cancellation in 1982.
In 1991, Baldwin met his future wife Kim Basinger on the set of the critically panned The Marrying Man. He appeared opposite Basinger again in The Getaway, a 1994 remake of the 1972 Steve McQueen film of the same name.
In a brief but memorable role, Baldwin played a ferocious sales executive in 1992's Glengarry Glen Ross, a part added to the film version of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play. Many felt the actor made a career mistake by choosing to star in 1992's Prelude to a Kiss with Meg Ryan, based on the Broadway play, rather than reprise his role as CIA analyst Ryan in another Tom Clancy thriller, Patriot Games. His film was a commercial flop while Harrison Ford scored back-to-back hits as Ryan.
He is also a voice actor, working in the films Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. Baldwin has hosted Saturday Night Live 13 times as of November 11, 2006. He performed as the narrator in the hit RTS video game World in Conflict.
Baldwin stars in the Emmy Award-winning NBC sitcom 30 Rock, which won the 2007 Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. Baldwin had met series creator Tina Fey and one of his co-stars Tracy Morgan during several tapings of Saturday Night Live. He has received numerous honors for his work as TV exec Jack Donaghy, including a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award. He was again nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Comedy or Musical in 2007 for the role.
Baldwin made his Broadway debut in 1986, in a revival of Joe Orton's Loot alongside theatre veterans Zoe Wanamaker, Zeljko Ivanek, Joseph Maher and Charles Keating. This production closed after three months.
Baldwin has always had an active interest in politics. He recently revealed in a British magazine interview that he plans to leave acting in a few years to pursue a career in politics. When interviewed by the New York Times, Baldwin was asked what public office he would consider running for, he replied: "If I ever ran for anything, the thing I would like to be is governor of New York." When asked if he was qualified, Baldwin answered: "That's what I hate about Arnold Schwarzenegger. His only credentials are that he ran a fitness program under some bygone president...I'm Tocqueville compared to Schwarzenegger." When asked why not be governor of California, Baldwin replied: "Then I would have to live in California. And who wants to live in California?" During his appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on December 11, 1998, eight days before President Bill Clinton was to be impeached, Baldwin said "if we were in another country... we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families". Baldwin later apologized to Hyde for his remarks and NBC has promised never to re-air the show. In 2000, an interview with Basinger appeared in the German magazine Focus, in which the actress said that Baldwin promised to leave the United States if George W. Bush beat Al Gore for the presidency. This statement provoked a great deal of controversy for both Baldwin and Basinger. He was criticized by Florida governor Jeb Bush and had to temporarily shut down his website due to what he described as hundreds of "hideous and graphic" writings from "political extremists whose only goal is to harass and disrupt." Baldwin claimed he never heard of Focus and that Basinger was never interviewed, although subsequently he did admit the interview took place. He has stated that he never threatened to leave the United States and believed he might be confused with director Robert Altman, who did indeed make a vow to leave the United States if Bush was re-elected. As Snopes.com has shown, no actual quote has ever been published showing that Baldwin in fact made the controversial promise. Baldwin said, "I think my exact comment was that if Bush won it would be a good time to leave the United States. I'm not necessarily going to leave the United States." Baldwin has called Vice President Dick Cheney a terrorist, and claimed that "he terrorizes our enemies abroad and innocent citizens here at home indiscriminately." He later recanted this statement, saying that Cheney was not a terrorist but rather "a lying, thieving oil whore and a murderer of the U.S. Constitution". Baldwin has continued to level strong criticisms at the Bush Administration on his blog labeling Bush a "trust fund puppet" and Cheney a "constitution hating sociopath" and a "hate-filled maniac".
Baldwin's marriage to Kim Basinger came to an end in 2000 when they officially separated. A year later, Basinger filed for divorce in Los Angeles Superior Court. In March 2004, Baldwin and Basinger agreed to share custody of their daughter, Ireland Eliesse (born October 23, 1995) . The judge presiding over the case issued a gag order, requiring Baldwin and Basinger to avoid commenting publicly about the case.
On April 11, 2007, Ireland failed to answer a pre-arranged phone call from her father, and Baldwin left an angry voicemail message for her. The child's private message was then leaked to the celebrity website TMZ.com on April 19, 2007. Baldwin's lawyers filed court papers accusing Basinger and her lawyer, Neal Hersh, of giving the tape to the website TMZ.com, run by Harvey Levin, in violation of a court order protecting the child's privacy. Basinger, who is already facing charges for a previous violation of court orders concerning Baldwin's visitations rights, denied that she leaked the tape to the press. The matter is sub judice. Baldwin subsequently apologized for losing his temper, stating, "I have been driven to the edge by parental alienation for many years." Baldwin discussed his outburst in the media, including an appearance on The View. Baldwin stated that he is writing a book about the issue of messy divorce. He said that once his book is published, "I'm sure more people will understand the incredible strains created by parental alienation".
Baldwin is an animal rights activist and follows a vegetarian diet. He is a strong supporter of PETA and has done work for the organization including narrating the video entitled 'Meet your Meat'.
