Alec Baldwin

• 1. Introduction

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  Alec Baldwin has hosted Saturday Night Live more often than anyone else in the show's history. As of 2017 he had done it 17 times, and the first came in 1990. Born Alexander Rae Baldwin III on the 3rd of April 1958, he has worked as a film actor, a Broadway lead, a voice performer, a radio and podcast host, and a producer. That range raises a few questions. Where did a Long Island teacher's son find the nerve for such a varied career? Why did the career keep needing a second act? And how did a western shot in New Mexico turn one of America's most recognizable actors into a criminal defendant?

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• 2. Long Island Beginnings

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  Massapequa, New York, is where Baldwin grew up, in the Nassau Shores neighborhood, although he was born in nearby Amityville. He was the eldest son of Carol, who came from Syracuse, and Alexander Rae Baldwin Jr., a Brooklyn-born high school history teacher and football coach. Football ran on his mother's side too. His maternal grandfather, Daniel Roy Martineau, played at Syracuse and then professionally for the Buffalo All-Americans and the Rochester Jeffersons.

  Three younger brothers, Daniel, William and Stephen, would all become actors. He also has two sisters, Elizabeth and Jane Ann. The children were raised as Catholics, with Irish, French and English ancestry. Through his father, Baldwin descends from John Howland, a passenger on the Mayflower, which makes him the 13th generation of his family born in North America.

  At Alfred G. Berner High School he played football under Coach Bob Reifsnyder. From 1976 to 1979 he attended George Washington University. In 1979 he lost the election for student body president, and former president Richard Nixon sent him a personal letter urging him to treat the defeat as a learning experience.

  Baldwin then moved to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. There he studied with Geoffrey Horne and Mira Rostova at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, and he was later accepted into the Actors Studio. Along the way he worked as a busboy at the famous discotheque Studio 54. He did not finish his Bachelor of Fine Arts until 1994. In 2010 he returned to NYU to give the commencement address and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts.

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• 3. Soaps To Stardom

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  On the 20th of August 1980, Baldwin began playing Billy Aldrich on the NBC daytime soap opera The Doctors. It was his first acting role, and it lasted until 1982. In the fall of 1983 he starred in a short-lived series called Cutter to Houston. A year later he made his television movie debut as the title lawman in The Sheriff and the Astronaut, playing Sheriff Ed Cassaday.

  From 1984 to 1985 he appeared on Knots Landing as the brother of Valene Ewing and the son of Lilimae Clements. Joan Van Ark and Julie Harris played those two characters. In 1986 he led Dress Gray, a four-hour miniseries. He played an honest cadet sergeant trying to solve the murder of a gay classmate.

  That same year Baldwin made his Broadway debut in a revival of Joe Orton's Loot. His castmates included Zoë Wanamaker, Željko Ivanek, Joseph Maher and Charles Keating. The production closed after three months.

  Forever, Lulu, a 1987 comedy-mystery, was his feature film debut, in a minor role. In 1988 alone he appeared in five major films. Tim Burton's fantasy horror comedy Beetlejuice put him opposite Michael Keaton and Geena Davis. Mike Nichols's Working Girl and Jonathan Demme's Married to the Mob gave him supporting parts. He co-starred with Eric Bogosian in Oliver Stone's drama Talk Radio. He also appeared with Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern in John Hughes's She's Having a Baby.

  The Hunt for Red October, released in 1990, made him a leading man in the role of Jack Ryan. That year he also starred in the black comedy crime film Miami Blues, alongside Jennifer Jason Leigh and Fred Ward.

  In 1992 he starred opposite Meg Ryan in Prelude to a Kiss, based on a Broadway play. Critics gave it a lukewarm reception, and it grossed only $22 million worldwide. The same year he played a ferocious sales executive in Glengarry Glen Ross. The part was added to the film version of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, and it came with the monologue containing the line "Coffee's for closers."

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• 4. Stage And Screen Range

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  The Shadow, released in 1994, gave Baldwin the title role in a film based on pulp fiction. It made $48 million. Thrillers followed in 1996 and 1997, among them The Edge, The Juror and Ghosts of Mississippi. In 2001 he played Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle in Pearl Harbor, which began a shift toward character acting. Its worldwide box office of $449,220,945 remains the highest of any film he has appeared in.

  The Cooler, a 2003 gambling drama, brought Baldwin nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor. Roger Ebert wrote, "This is one of Alec Baldwin's best performances, as a character who contains vast contradictions. He can be kind and brutal simultaneously; affection and cruelty are handmaidens." He then worked with Martin Scorsese twice. He played Juan Trippe in The Aviator in 2004, and Capt. George Ellerby in The Departed in 2006.

  The theater kept pulling him back. His Broadway credits include Caryl Churchill's Serious Money with Kate Nelligan. In a revival of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, he played Stanley Kowalski and earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play. In the 1995 television version he and Jessica Lange reprised their roles, alongside John Goodman and Diane Lane, and he received an Emmy nomination.

  In 1998 Baldwin played the title role in Macbeth at The Public Theater, with Angela Bassett and Liev Schreiber. George C. Wolfe directed. In 2004 he starred in a Broadway revival of Twentieth Century as an egomaniacal director, with Anne Heche as the chorus girl he turns into a star. Charles Isherwood of Variety was mixed, writing that Baldwin "is an earthy actor with a natural contemporary style, and his hoity-toity faux-British accent sounds more off-key than it should." On the 9th of June 2005 he played Luther Billis in a concert version of South Pacific at Carnegie Hall, with Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell. PBS broadcast it in April 2006.

  In the late 1990s Baldwin became the third American narrator of Thomas & Friends, replacing George Carlin for the fifth and sixth seasons. In 2000 he played Mr. Conductor in the film Thomas and the Magic Railroad. He also wrote an episode of Law & Order titled "Tabloid," which aired in 1998. In 2003 he appeared in The Cat in the Hat.

  Television guest roles were a lighter sideline. In 2002 he played Parker, Phoebe's overly enthusiastic love interest, in two episodes of Friends. On Will & Grace he played Malcolm, a "top secret agent" and the lover of Karen Walker, played by Megan Mullally. He appeared in the first live episode of that series. On Nip/Tuck he played Dr. Barrett Moore, a retired plastic surgeon.

  In 2001 Baldwin directed and starred in The Devil and Daniel Webster, with Anthony Hopkins, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Dan Aykroyd. The unfinished film became an asset in a federal bank fraud trial, when the investor Jed Barron was convicted while it was in production. The Yari Group eventually acquired it without Baldwin's involvement. In 2007 the Yari Film Group announced a theatrical release under the new title Shortcut to Happiness, and Starz acquired pay television rights. It finally came out in 2008. Unhappy with the post-production cut, Baldwin demanded that his directing credit be changed to the pseudonym "Harry Kirkpatrick."

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• 5. Jack Donaghy Years

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  NBC's 30 Rock first aired in October 2006, with Baldwin starring as Jack Donaghy opposite Tina Fey. He had met Fey and her co-star Tracy Morgan while appearing on Saturday Night Live. From the third season he was also credited as one of the show's producers. Barry Garron of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Donaghy is a perfect example of what's right with this show." Baldwin won a Primetime Emmy for the role in 2008 and won again in 2009. He also collected seven Screen Actors Guild Awards.

  Work piled up around the sitcom. In 2008 Baldwin co-authored A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce with Mark Tabb, and toured in support of it. That year he also voiced the main antagonist in the DreamWorks film Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. On the 12th of January 2009 he became host of The New York Philharmonic This Week, the orchestra's nationally syndicated radio series. In March 2009 he joined Robert Osborne as co-host of TCM's The Essentials.

  It's Complicated paired him with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that Baldwin "beautifully conveys male vanity in its twilight." The role earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 2010 he and Martin co-hosted the 82nd Academy Awards. Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe praised the pair as "expert and warmly conversational, like one of those old-school comedy teams."

  On the 24th of October 2011, WNYC released the first episode of Baldwin's podcast Here's the Thing. The first two guests were actor Michael Douglas and political consultant Ed Rollins. Between 2011 and 2020 Baldwin completed more than 150 interviews. Guests included Wynton Marsalis, Edward Norton, David Letterman, Itzhak Perlman and Lang Lang. Lu Olkowski, Trey Kay, Kathy Russo and Emily Botein developed the show for him.

  On stage, Baldwin appeared in Roundabout Theatre Company's Off-Broadway revival of Entertaining Mr. Sloane in 2006. In 2010 he starred in a critically acclaimed revival of Peter Shaffer's Equus at Guild Hall in East Hampton, with Sam Underwood. He returned to Broadway as Harold in Orphans, which opened on the 18th of April 2013. Shia LaBeouf left the production during rehearsals and was replaced by Ben Foster. Marilyn Stasio of Variety described Baldwin's performance as "executed with humor and compassion."

  That same year Baldwin briefly hosted Up Late with Alec Baldwin on MSNBC. The network cancelled it on the 26th of November 2013, after only five episodes. The cancellation followed in part a street tirade captured on video, in which he allegedly used an anti-gay slur toward a videographer. Baldwin denied using the slur. His contract as a Capital One spokesperson was not renewed, and Jennifer Garner took his place. He later called the incident a major turning point in his public life.

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• 6. Trump And Reinvention

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  Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation reached theaters on the 31st of July 2015, with Baldwin in the cast. He returned for Mission: Impossible - Fallout, released on the 27th of July 2018. In 2016 he began hosting an ABC reboot of the game show Match Game, which ran until 2021.

  In 2016 Baldwin also returned to Saturday Night Live in a new guise, portraying Republican nominee Donald Trump during the show's coverage of the presidential election. Critics praised it. The portrayal won him the 2017 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, and brought nominations in 2018 and 2021. He kept playing Trump until Trump's defeat in the 2020 election.

  The year 2017 brought other changes. After Robert Osborne died, Baldwin became sole host of TCM's The Essentials. In August his production company, El Dorado Pictures, signed a first-look deal with ABC Studios. His memoir Nevertheless debuted at No. 5 on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list. On the 3rd of March 2018, after the 90th Academy Awards, ABC aired a preview of the talk show The Alec Baldwin Show, then called Sundays With Alec Baldwin. A nine-episode order was set for that fall.

  On the 27th of August 2018, it was announced that Baldwin would play Thomas Wayne, father of Bruce Wayne, in Joker. Two days later he withdrew from the role. That year he made cameos in Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman as Dr. Kennebrew Beaureguard and in Bradley Cooper's A Star Is Born as himself. He also played George Tenet in the Hulu miniseries The Looming Tower.

  The 2019 Comedy Central Roast made Baldwin its subject, and his daughter Ireland made a surprise appearance among the roasters. In 2021 he starred with Jamie Dornan and Christian Slater in the Peacock miniseries Dr. Death. In Todd Field's Tár in 2022, he gave a voice cameo as himself, interviewing Cate Blanchett's Lydia Tár. In 2023 he turned up in a Saturday Night Live sketch spoofing the Calm app.

  In 2024 he came back to Saturday Night Live as Brett Baier, opposite Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris, in a cold open spoofing a Fox News interview. He later played Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a cold open about Donald Trump's Cabinet picks after Trump's win in the 2024 presidential election.

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• 7. Family And Causes

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  In 1990 Baldwin met the actress Kim Basinger, when they played lovers in The Marrying Man. They appeared together again in The Getaway, a 1994 remake of the 1972 Steve McQueen film. They married on the 19th of August 1993, and their daughter Ireland was born on the 23rd of October 1995. The couple separated on the 5th of December 2000 and divorced on the 3rd of September 2002.

  Baldwin called the attorneys in the case "opportunists" and described Basinger's psychologists as part of the "divorce industry." In his memoir he blamed those professionals more than Basinger, writing, "She is a person, like many of us, doing the best she can with what she has." He wrote that the dispute strained his relationship with Ireland. To stay in her life, he said, he spent over a million dollars, set time aside from his career, and found a house in California after living in New York.

  On the 11th of April 2007, Baldwin left a voicemail for his 11-year-old daughter after an arranged call went unanswered. He called her a "rude, thoughtless little pig." The tape was sold to TMZ, which published it despite laws against publishing media related to a minor without both parents' permission. Baldwin called it a mistake that did not make him a bad parent. In a June 2009 interview with Playboy, he said he contemplated suicide after the leak but sought professional help.

  By August 2011 Baldwin was dating Hilaria Thomas, a yoga instructor with Yoga Vida in Manhattan. They became engaged in April 2012 and married on the 30th of June 2012 at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in New York City. They have seven children. In May 2023 Ireland had a baby girl with the musician RAC, making Baldwin a grandfather. The family taped the reality series The Baldwins in 2024, and it premiered on TLC on the 23rd of February 2025.

  In 1996 Baldwin and his mother created the Carol M. Baldwin Cancer Research Fund. The Carol M. Baldwin Breast Care Center at Stony Brook University Hospital is dedicated to her. During his Capital One stint, his contract was written to fund his charity foundation. He was paid $15 million over nearly five years, and after taxes and accounting fees the remaining $14.125 million went to charity. In March 2011 he gave $1 million to the New York Philharmonic, on whose board he served, and $500,000 to the Roundabout Theatre Company.

  Politically, Baldwin is a Democrat who endorsed Barack Obama in both of his presidential campaigns. He serves on the board of People for the American Way. He gave up eating beef in 1991 and supports PETA, narrating its video Meet Your Meat. The Simpsons episode "The Bonfire of the Manatees" cast him as a biologist saving manatees, and the Save the Manatee Club then asked him to record public service announcements.

  His outbursts have made news too. On Late Night with Conan O'Brien on the 11th of December 1998, he delivered a staged satirical rant about Congressman Henry Hyde, eight days before President Bill Clinton was to be impeached. O'Brien ended it by putting an oxygen mask over Baldwin's mouth. Baldwin later apologized to Hyde, and the network promised not to rerun the segment. On the 21st of December 2011 he dropped talk of running for mayor of New York City. At the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards that year, producers cut a joke in his taped skit about Rupert Murdoch. Baldwin boycotted the show, and Leonard Nimoy replaced him.

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• 8. The Rust Case

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  On the 21st of October 2021, Baldwin was filming Rust at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was also a producer on the film. He accidentally discharged a live round from a revolver being used as a prop. The shot killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza.

  The Hutchins family filed a wrongful death suit. On the 5th of October 2022, Baldwin reached an undisclosed settlement with them. In March 2024, court documents indicated that the producers of Rust, including Baldwin, were nine months late paying the agreed settlement fees to Hutchins's widower and son. As of November 2024, one of the two payments had been made. The Western itself reached audiences in 2024, with Baldwin starring.

  On the 31st of January 2023, Baldwin was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. His lawyers argued that the elevated second charge relied on a version of the law not passed until months after the shooting, and it was dropped. On the 23rd of February he pleaded not guilty. In April his lawyers announced that prosecutors had dropped the charges. Then on the 17th of October 2023, New Mexico special prosecutors announced findings indicating that he may be guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

  A grand jury indicted Baldwin in January 2024. The indictment gave prosecutors two routes to the charge. One was negligent use of a firearm. The other was felony misconduct "with the total disregard or indifference for the safety of others." On the 24th of May, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer denied his motion to dismiss, and the trial began in Santa Fe on the 9th of July.

  Three days later, on the 12th of July, Sommer dismissed the case with prejudice because the prosecution had withheld evidence from the defense. She found that the "willful withholding of this information was intentional and deliberate." If it was not bad faith, she said, it came so close as to display "signs of scorching prejudice." On the 25th of October, she upheld the dismissal.

  In January 2025, Baldwin filed a civil rights suit against officials in Santa Fe, alleging he was wrongfully prosecuted. The court dismissed it in July 2025 because he and his lawyers had not taken steps to move the case forward.

  The Trial of Alec Baldwin, directed by Rory Kennedy, had its world premiere at DOC NYC in November 2025. Kennedy stated in an affidavit that Baldwin neither approached nor commissioned the film and had no creative or editorial control. The Rust producers refused her access to the production, because they felt Baldwin was pursuing the project in order to "exonerate" himself. Director Joel Souza declined to sit for an interview.

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