Alec Baldwin

Alec Baldwin
Alex Baldwin as Jack Donaghy in 30 Rock
Born	Alexander Rae Baldwin III
Occupation(s)	Film, stage, television actor
Spouse	Kim Basinger (1993-2002)
Awards	NBR Award for Best Cast 2000 State and Main 2006 The Departed NBR Award for Best Supporting Actor 2003 The Cooler
Website	http://www.alecbaldwin.com/

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. He is also noted for having hosted Saturday Night Live multiple times. He is currently playing television executive Jack Donaghy in the NBC situation-comedy 30 Rock.

Biography

Early life

Baldwin was born in Massapequa, New York, the son of Carolyn Newcomb (née Martineau) and Alexander Rae Baldwin, Jr., a high school history/social studies teacher and 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 (Homicide: Life on the street), William (Backdraft), and Stephen (The Usual Suspects) all followed him in becoming actors.

Film & television work

Baldwin's first major role was as Billy Aldrich on the daytime soap opera The Doctors from 1980 to its cancellation in 1982. In the fall of 1983, he starred in the short lived series Cutter to Houston. He then shot to stardom co-starring on Knots Landing from 1984-86. In 1986, he made his film debut with a minor role in She's Having a Baby. In 1988, he appeared in Beetlejuice and Working Girl. Both of these films were box office successes that raised his profile. His film career was then firmly established with his role as Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October (1990).

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.

Baldwin played the mysterious title character in another film that failed at the box office, 1994's The Shadow. His late '90s roles also had a lukewarm reception. They included several thrillers, such as The Edge (with Anthony Hopkins), The Juror (with Demi Moore) and Heaven's Prisoners.

At that point, Baldwin shifted more toward being a character actor, including his Academy Award nominated turn in 2003's gambling drama The Cooler and in working with director Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio in both The Aviator and The Departed.

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 has been nominated for an Emmy Award six times (see below):

• 1996: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Special, for Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire
• 2001: Outstanding Miniseries, for Nuremberg (as producer)
• 2002: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Special, for Path to War (as Robert McNamara)
• 2005: Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series, for Will & Grace
• 2006: Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series, for Will & Grace
• 2007: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, for 30 Rock

Baldwin wrote an episode of Law & Order entitled "Tabloid", which aired in 1998. He played the role of Dr. Barrett Moore, a retired plastic surgeon, in the series Nip/Tuck. In 2001, Baldwin directed and starred in an all-star version of The Devil and Daniel Webster with Anthony Hopkins, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Dan Aykroyd. This film has yet to be released, however. The film became an asset of a federal bank fraud trial in 2003, where financial investor Jed Barron, of Las Vegas, was convicted of bank fraud while financing the movie. The film's producer, David Glasser, was also under investigation. The film eventually was acquired by producer Bob Yari and his company.

In 2002, he appeared on 2 episodes of Friends as Phoebe's overly enthusiastic love interest, Parker. In the episode entitled "The One in Massapequa", Parker, seemingly clueless and curious about its history, comments that Massapequa sounds like a "magical place". In reality, Baldwin was born and raised in Massapequa.

In 2006, he starred in the film "Mini's First Time", alongside Nikki Reed and Luke Wilson. In 2007, the Yari Film Group announced it would give the film, now titled Shortcut to Happiness a theatrical release in the spring. Starz also announced they had acquired pay TV rights for the film. Baldwin also recently performed opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar in a romantic comedy, Suburban Girl.

On July 7, 2007, Baldwin presented at the American leg of Live Earth. He also recorded two nationally distributed public service radio announcements on behalf of the Save the Manatee Club.

30 Rock

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 but lost to Rick Gervais.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

On November 12, 2000, Baldwin appeared in a celebrity edition of the show above with Jon Stewart, Charlie Sheen, Vivica A. Fox and Norm Macdonald. He walked away with $250,000 for PAWS and used Kim Basinger as a phone friend.

Stage career

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.

His other Broadway credits include Caryl Churchill's Serious Money with Kate Nelligan and a highly acclaimed revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire which garnered him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor. This production also featured Jessica Lange, Amy Madigan, Timothy Carhart, James Gandolfini, and Aida Turturro. Baldwin would receive an Emmy nomination for the television version of the production, in which both he and Lange reprise their roles. That version featured John Goodman and Diane Lane.

In 1998 Baldwin played the title role in Macbeth at the Public theater alongside Angela Bassett and Liev Schreiber. The production was directed by George C. Wolfe. In 2004, Baldwin starred in a revival of the play Twentieth Century with Anne Heche.

On June 9, 2005, he appeared in a concert version of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific at Carnegie Hall. He starred as Luther Billis, alongside Reba McEntire as Nellie and Brian Stokes Mitchell as Emile. The production was taped and telecast by PBS on April 26, 2006. In 2006, Baldwin made theatre news in Roundabout Theatre Company's Off-Broadway revival of Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr. Sloane.

Politics

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".

In 2002, conservative blogger Matt Drudge threatened to sue Baldwin for his appearance on the Howard Stern show, during which Baldwin claimed that Drudge was gay and had tried to hit on him in the hallway at ABC studios in Los Angeles when he was doing the Gloria Allred show. No other action was taken by Drudge.

On March 26, 2006, Baldwin guest-hosted Brian Whitman's talk show on WABC radio in New York. During the show, conservative talk show hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin called the show to confront Baldwin about his political comments over the years. Hannity also claimed that Baldwin had been scheduled to appear on his show first, but Baldwin asserted that he never had such a deal, and that he'd never have agreed to go on Hannity's show. The back-and-forth continued for about ten minutes until Levin asked, "why is your wife so mad at you anyway," at which point Baldwin said, "we're done," and walked out of the studio. Baldwin later wrote in his blog at the Huffington Post that WABC President and General Manager Tim McCarthy phoned him on March 28 to "apologize for Sean's attacks." In the same entry, Baldwin also noted that "Levin made a comment connected to my divorce proceedings... I thought that Levin, whoever he may be and whatever code he does or does not operate by, had crossed a line and I was under no obligation to continue in that vein."

Baldwin once compared the 2000 presidential election to the September 11, 2001 attacks: "I know that's a harsh thing to say, perhaps, but I believe that what happened in 2000 did as much damage to the pillars of democracy as terrorists did to the pillars of commerce in New York City."

Baldwin and commentator Bill O'Reilly have been in a number of conflicts. Despite their political differences, however, Baldwin stated on his blog after an interview with O'Reilly, that he "was aggressive, but was a gentleman throughout", and also called O'Reilly a "talented broadcaster." Baldwin, however, also referred to O'Reilly's employer, Fox News Channel, in the same blog post as "Roger Ailes' Luftwaffe/Looney Bin news operation."

Baldwin serves on the board of People for the American Way.

Baldwin frequently expresses his opinions in blogs on The Huffington Post.

Personal life

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.. 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'.

Filmography

Features

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1987	Forever, Lulu	Buck
1988	She's Having a Baby	Davis McDonald
	Beetlejuice	Adam Maitland
	Married to the Mob	Frank de Marco
	Working Girl	Mick Dugan
	Talk Radio	Dan
1989	Great Balls of Fire!	Jimmy Swaggart
	Tong Tana	(narrator)	(documentary)
1990	The Hunt for Red October	Jack Ryan
	Miami Blues	Frederick J. Frenger Jr.
	Alice	Ed
1991	The Marrying Man	Charley Pearl
1992	Prelude to a Kiss	Peter Hoskins
	Glengarry Glen Ross	Blake
1993	Malice	Dr. Jed Hill
1994	The Getaway	Carter 'Doc' McCoy
	The Shadow	Lamont Cranston/The Shadow
1995	Two Bits	(narrator)
1996	Wild Bill: Hollywoos Maverick	(narrator)	(documentary)
	The Juror	Teacher
	Heaven's Prisoners	Dave Robicheaux
	Looking for Richard		(documentary)
	Ghosts of Mississippi	Bobby DeLaughter
1997	The Edge	Robert Green
1998	Thick as Thieves	Mackin, The Thief
	Mercury Rising	Lt. Col. Nicholas Kudrow
1999	The Confession	Roy Bleakie
	Notting Hill	Jeff King
	Outside Providence	Old Man Dunphy
2000	The Acting Class	Himself
	Thomas and the Magic Railroad	Mr. Conductor
	State and Main	Bob Barrenger
2001	Pearl Harbor	Lt. Col. James Doolittle
	Cats & Dogs	Butch	(voice)
	Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within	Capt. Gray Edwards	(voice)
	The Royal Tenenbaums	(narrator)	(voice)
2002	The Adventures of Pluto Nash	M.Z.M.
2003	The Cooler	Shelly Kaplow
	Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There
	The Cat in the Hat	Lawrence "Larry" Quinn
2004	Along Came Polly	Stan Indursky
	Double Dare		(documentary)
	The Last Shot	Joe Devine
	The Aviator	Juan Trippe
	The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie	Dennis (Plankton's Minion)	(voice)
2005	Elizabethtown	Phil DeVoss
	Fun with Dick and Jane	Jack McCallister
2006	Mini's First Time	Martin
	The Departed	Capt. George Ellerby
	Running with Scissors	Norman Burroughs
	The Good Shepherd	Sam Murach
2007	Suburban Girl	Archie Knox
	Brooklyn Rules	Caesar Manganaro
	Shortcut to Happiness	Jabez Stone
	World in Conflict (Game)	Lt. Parker (narrator)	voice
2008	My Best Friend's Girl		post-production
2009	Lymelife	Mickey Bartlett	post-production
	My Sister's Keeper	Campbell Alexander	filming

Short subjects

• Scout's Honor (1999)
• Brighter Days (2003)

External links

• Official Site
• Alec Baldwin at IMDb
• Alec Baldwin at AllMovie
• Template:Voice actor
• Political contributions of Alec Baldwin
• Alec Baldwin's Blog at Huffington Post
• Alec Baldwin speaks out about travelling animal acts.
• Alec Baldwin circus ad
• Alec Baldwin addresses Congress
• Alec Baldwin narrates the meat.org video
• Alec Baldwin's Charity Work

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