COMEDY COMEBACK
Alec Baldwin’s career revival
The irony is not lost on Alec Baldwin. Here he is currently enjoying a huge surge in popularity and it is all down to his portrayal of the least popular US president ever.
He admits that impersonating Donald Trump on the TV show Saturday Night Live has revitalised his career, but the actor feels a bit uneasy about it.
“I’m being reincarnated. As Trump! Oh, God!” While he is grateful for the career revival, he wishes he could have found this latest boost of fame portraying someone else. “It’s stressful to play him because he’s not someone I am in love with.”
People constantly tell him, “I can’t thank you enough – what you’re doing is so important,” but he
is quick to point out that it’s not him that people love, but the fact he pokes fun at someone they despise. “Bringing down Trump is beloved – I’m not beloved.”
While he’s not a Donald fan, Alec recognises that he and the politician actually have some fundamental things in common, including a tendency to go overboard on Twitter and an anger at the media for misrepresenting them.
Donald is always complaining about the way he is portrayed in the media (including the way Alec impersonates him) and the actor has had his share of run-ins with the press over the years. But Alec’s talking at the moment to publicise his new film Boss Baby and a book he’s written, Nevertheless: A Memoir, and says he feels bad for Donald because “I feel sad for anybody who is put in the stocks by the press, whether they earned it or not.”
Alec’s moment of “being hung up to dry” came in 2013, when he confronted a paparazzi videographer who was trying to film him and his family.
Alec (59) admits swearing at the man, but he denies using an offensive homophic term, as reported in the media.
He was instantly branded a homophobe and in New
York, where he lives, he was ostracised by some of the communities he was a part of, including theatrical and political circles. He recalls going to an event soon after the story broke.
“Nobody would talk to me... I was just numb. It was horrible. I was a pariah – I was a homophobe. The fact that people thought that made me incredibly sad.”
His TV show Up Late With Alec Baldwin was cancelled after five episodes, partly because of the incident, and his career, which had been soaring after an award-winning six-year stint on 30 Rock, slumped.
It wasn’t the first time a single word had caused a huge backlash against him. In 2007, he was pilloried for a voicemail message he left for his daughter Ireland, then 12, in which he described her as a “rude, thoughtless little pig”.
It was the word “pig” that got everyone up in arms, including Ireland’s mother, Alec’s ex-wife Kim Basinger, and in this case, he did actually say it.
Alec, who was angry at his daughter for avoiding his phone calls, apologised and described it as one “bad moment”. But he
says in his memoir that the incident left a “permanent break” in his relationship with his daughter, although they have reconciled now. However, he’s never allowed to forget it.
“It’s thrown in your face every day. It’s a scab that never heals because it is being picked at all the time by other people.”
Alec’s book also includes details of his marriage to Kim, which ended acrimoniously after seven years. He says their custody battle over Ireland (21) “was like fighting cancer”.
He writes about his addiction to cocaine and alcohol, which led to him nearly dying from a drug overdose in 1984, and his struggles with OCD. He developed the condition after growing up with five siblings in a home that was a mess all the time. “My mother didn’t have the energy to clean up after six kids. I walked out of that house with almost crippling OCD.”
Another part of his childhood that had a long-lasting effect was having a schoolteacher dad who earned very little money. “My whole life became about, ‘I don’t want to be like my dad – I don’t want to get in trouble financially.’ That effed up my career in some ways. I didn’t really do what I wanted to do career-wise.”
Doing movies purely for money meant he didn’t pursue a Broadway career, which is what he wishes he’d done. But now his priorities have changed.
Alec’s been married since 2012 to Spanish yoga instructor Hilaria Thomas (33) and they have three children, Carmen
(3), Rafael (2) and seven-monthold Leonardo.
“I don’t want to be Mr Showbusiness any more. I want the same thing everyone else wants. I want a happy home and for the first time in my life, I have one.”
‘ Nobody would talk to me... I was just numb. It was horrible. I was a pariah’