From arrests and scuffles with the paparazzi,
to Twitter spats and a deadly shooting, Alec Baldwin seems to always be in the
news. Here are the many controversies that have followed the Oscar-nominated actor.
In 1995, a photographer bit off a lot more
than he could chew when he tried to get a shot of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger's newborn daughter,
Ireland. According to the Chicago Tribune, Baldwin's confrontation with the cameraman,
Alan Zanger, occurred when the latter wouldn't stop working the lens at Baldwin's request.
The incident, which took place near the couple's Woodland Hills, California home,
resulted in a broken nose and glasses on Zanger's part. Baldwin was also reported
to have vandalized Zanger's truck with shaving cream, per People.
In a statement shared by Baldwin's publicist, he alluded to the injuries inflicted on Zanger
as being negligible, as the Los Angeles Times relayed. Baldwin said in a statement at the time:
"Anyone with a shred of human decency would understand that there are times in your life when
you want your privacy respected, whether you are a public figure or not. ... That Mr. Zanger felt
it was appropriate to videotape my home and my family for his own profit is unacceptable to me."
Zanger sought legal action, and in 1997 — a little over two years after the scuffle
ensued — was awarded a damage compensation to the tune of $4,500. Baldwin, on the other hand,
pursued litigation for breach of privacy and won. He was also relieved of assault charges.
Back in 2007, TMZ got hold of audio
from the Baldwin household, in which Alec Baldwin called the then-11-year-old Ireland
Baldwin "a rude, thoughtless little pig" for missing an arranged call. Alec happened to be
co-parenting with Kim Basinger since their 2001 split and subsequent custody battle, which was
ugly, to say the least. In the sound recording, Alec was quoted to have said of his ex-wife,
"Your mother is a thoughtless pain in the a-- who doesn't care about what you do."
He would later acknowledge his wrongdoing through a representative who spoke to Extra, but accused
Basinger and a legal representative of illegally releasing the audiotape to the press. A long note,
published on Alec's website, went on to cite a taxing parenting relationship with Basinger,
promising that more details would be made available in an upcoming publication.
True to Alec Baldwin's word, the actor's book, A Promise to Ourselves:
A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce was released in September 2008.
The love story between Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger first brewed at a table read,
right before the ill-fated movie The Marrying Man went into production,
per People. They met up for dinner soon after, and as one thing led to another, their romance grew
heated on-set. Part of the crew hinted at the work environment being unbearable, with People saying:
"It was a tour de force demonstration of on-set egotism,
chair-throwing rages and sexual exhibitionism."
According to People, one crew member on the production even alleged:
"Their actions were vile, deplorable, despicable."
The same intensity would play itself years later when Baldwin and Basinger, then a year
shy of a decade-long marriage, finalized their divorce in 2002. However, they got caught up
in a very public custody tussle for the next four years. Baldwin told The Guardian in 2013,
"That point in my life is a blur ... It was a period that was so painful,
I was staring off a cliff for six years."
In 2011, Alec Baldwin had
a diet change that saw him shed 30 pounds in four months. According to ABC News,
Baldwin's diet was completely void of sugar, and he'd tailored a fitness routine that
included Pilates, spinning, and a bit of yoga. The change was in part due to the influence of
wellness enthusiast and soon-to-be wife Hilaria Thomas, as well as a pre-diabetes diagnosis.
Baldwin was so impressed by his progress that he got carried away and let his pants
fall on the floor during a Late Night with David Letterman interview. And no,
that wouldn't be the only time. A 2019 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon would
feature a rerun of Baldwin's bold move as an audience cheered on. Baldwin asserted on the show:
"You want to see how much weight I've lost? Ready? My pants don't even fit me anymore."
Earlier that year, he'd revealed that his workout regimen also involved a hundred
pushups per day on The Howard Stern Show — the newer plan came about as a tip from Saturday
Night Live co-star Pete Davidson. However, the younger comic later admitted to Jimmy Fallon,
"I didn't want to be rude and say like, 'I just still have metabolism.'"
Davidson then added:
"To make him feel better, I was like, 'Oh man,
I do a hundred pushups and a hundred situps every day.' And he was like, 'Got it!'"
With a laugh, Davidson added of Baldwin's weight loss,
"He says it's all because of me."
Alec Baldwin isn't the only Baldwin
getting the masses talking. His second wife, Hilaria Baldwin,
had made some headlines of her own — her most controversial one surrounding questions about
the authenticity of her lineage. The yoga instructor took to Instagram in late 2020
to reply to concerns over her allegedly falsified Spanish descent and seemingly
alternating accent in two since-deleted videos. Her first caption read, in part:
"I was born in Boston and grew up spending time with my family between Massachusetts and
Spain. My parents and sibling live in Spain and I chose to live here, in the U.S.A."
Hilaria added,
"When I was growing up, in this country, I would use the name Hillary, and in Spain,
I would use Hilaria, and my family, my parents, call me Hilaria."
Baldwin went on to add:
"Ethnically I'm a mix of many, many things; culturally, I grew up with the two cultures."
A number of details appeared to invalidate Hilaria's origin story in the eyes of social
media sleuths. For instance, a now-deleted Creative Arts Agency bio initially implied that
her birthplace was Mallorca, Spain. Similarly, she'd suggested on a later-removed interview on
the "#MomTruths" podcast that, as an NYU alum, she moved to the United States in her late
teens. Even more confusing, Hilaria's granddad David L. Thomas Sr.'s obituary seemingly placed
her ancestry in Massachusetts. Hilaria later shared in another since-deleted Instagram post,
"At this point I'm starting to think I'm being attacked
for who I am and no answer is the right answer."
Aircraft rules might have been the least of Alec Baldwin's worries when his love for the
game Words With Friends led to an altercation with an American Airlines flight attendant in December
2011. Baldwin was eventually escorted off the plane. The actor later tweeted of the incident:
"Flight attendants on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS
W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving."
However, there was apparently more to the story. American Airlines stated on Facebook:
"The passenger was extremely rude to the crew,
calling them inappropriate names and using offensive language."
American Airlines also alleged that Baldwin stormed off to the restroom
when he was asked to turn off his phone ahead of takeoff. The airline wrote on Facebook:
"He slammed the lavatory door so hard, the cockpit crew heard it and became alarmed,
even with the cockpit door closed and locked. They
immediately contacted the cabin crew to check on the situation."
While Baldwin apologized to his fellow passengers in a HuffPost
column for any inconvenient delays caused by his behavior, he ultimately found fault with
the airlines' choice of stewardesses — a sentiment he echoed on Twitter, writing:
"Last flight with American. Where retired Catholic
school gym teachers from the 1950's find jobs as flight attendants."
Alec Baldwin's tangled life led to another headline-making twist when
he went head-to-head with Boston Marathon bombing survivor Wojciech Cieszkowski in
a parking lot in November 2018. According to Page Six, Baldwin's spouse had reserved
space for the actor when Cieszkowski, who was behind the wheel of a Saab, bolted in.
What ensued was an alleged show of fury on Baldwin's part, as narrated to the publication
by unnamed observers. Things reportedly got physical enough for Baldwin to land in a
Greenwich Village detention cell. Through Twitter, Baldwin maintained his innocence, writing in part,
"The assertion that I punched anyone over a parking spot is false. ... I realize that it has
become a sport to tag people with as many negative ... charges and defaming allegations as possible
... Fortunately, no matter how reverberating the echos, it doesn't make the statements true."
A Cieszkowski home visit by the New York Post proved that he was
in good condition. He revealed to the newspaper:
"I'm recovering. ... You know, sore, but I'll be fine."
Still, Cieszkowski filed a slander suit against Baldwin after he spoke about the incident in
the talk show circuit. In December 2019, a summary of the legal proceedings showed that
this charge was dropped. However, Baldwin would complete an anger management course,
having previously pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment.
Alec Baldwin went up against the paparazzi in November 2013 in front of his Manhattan
flat. A clip shared by TMZ showed an irate Alec coming face to face with the man in question,
who'd been taking pictures of his family. In the TMZ clip, Baldwin shouted to the person:
"Get away from my wife and the baby with the camera!"
Following a short-lived chase, he turned to a second cameraman who'd been capturing the
exchange and called him a homophobic slur before hopping onto his ride. A
representative for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation told TMZ:
"Mr. Baldwin can't lend his support for equality on paper,
while degrading gay people in practice. It's clearly time he listens to the calls
from so many LGBT people and allies to end this pattern of anti-gay slurs."
Unfortunately, this would mark just one of Alec's many clashes
with the LGBTQ+ community after making anti-gay utterances. The previous year,
he'd allegedly made shocking comments while reportedly manhandling another photographer.
Not that he hasn't made attempts at making peace with the queer community.
Following a series of explicit tweets posted in July 2013 after the Daily Mail published an
unflattering piece about Hilaria Baldwin, Alec issued an apology to GLAAD that partially read:
"I would not advocate violence against someone for being gay and I hope that my friends at GLAAD and
the gay community understand that my attack ... in no way was the result of homophobia."
The '80s were admittedly quite a wild ride for Alec Baldwin. Amid his rise to fame,
the actor spent two years excessively drinking and
using drugs daily. Baldwin disclosed in a 2017 conversation with CBS Sunday Morning:
"It was kind of a white-hot period where I ran
around with people in L.A and did a lot of partying."
Noting that this was the culture in Hollywood at the time,
the young star believed he had it together, but added,
"It just made me very, very sick."
It was a past that Baldwin stacked on a shelf for a long time. Details of
Baldwin's action-packed twenties were finally revealed in a 2008 book by Christopher Kennedy
Lawford titled Moments of Clarity: Voices from the Front Lines of Addiction and Recovery,
and so were the events that led him to joining a support group and opting
for a clean life just before turning 27 in 1985. Baldwin wrote of the group's leader:
"God got me sober. That day, God was a black, 65-year-old retired postal worker
named Lenny. Lenny said, 'You never have to feel this way again if you don't want to.'"
Speaking with ABC News while promoting his memoir Nevertheless,
Baldwin reflected on this painful time ahead of his journey toward sobriety at a young age:
"I know that, at that time, and when I describe overdosing on drugs, which I've kept very
private for years and years and years, I think I would have gotten it eventually."
The fact that Alec Baldwin has made big bank as an actor isn't news. But
with the same vigor that Alec splashed $1.75 million on a 50-acre Vermont estate in 2022,
he's also exhibited a charitable spirit that has gone a long way. In solidarity
with The Owen Hart Foundation, Alec decided to forgo a 2018 performance charge for "An
Evening with Alec Baldwin," contributing it to the organization instead. He previously
donated his earnings for an advertising job with Capital One. Baldwin told The Wall Street Journal:
"It's going to be given to arts organizations that I'm involved
in like the Hamptons Film Festival and Guild Hall ... The arts really
matters to people. We're cutting funding there, and I think that's a huge mistake."
Giving, it turns out, is an act that was instilled in Alec at home. His mother,
Carol Baldwin, was a breast cancer survivor who headed The Carol M.
Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund Inc. In 2007, board member Alec opened up about the
organization's goals to raise awareness and funds. Baldwin told Energy Times:
"I would like to see early detection, to see breast cancer rates drop precipitously."
When Alec announced his mother's death via Instagram in May 2022,
it was revealed that they had raised millions.
"My mother taught me about second acts ... She spent the last 25 years of her
life as a fighter and a champion for the cause to which she devoted so much
energy. We are all enormously proud of her accomplishments."
Alec Baldwin commands a
large following online in the neighborhood of 3.5 million between Twitter and Instagram. As such,
it's not uncommon for him to declare his political stances. For example, in 2012,
renowned democrat Alec, who has publicly sought voters for the party's candidates,
voiced his support for then-President Barack Obama. The actor wrote in a string of tweets:
"Some complain on Twitter about Obama. You wanna go back? To Bush? Cheney? Paulson?
Rumsfeld? Unfunded wars? Death of U.S. soldiers and innocent civilians for oil?"
Six years later, Alec joined a long list of celebrities who opposed the viewpoints and
operations of the National Rifle Association in a movement dubbed #NoRA. But when Alec took on
the daring task of performing his recurring Donald Trump gimmick on Saturday Night Live,
it eventually led to animosity between him and his conservative brother,
Stephen Baldwin. Stephen told CBS News in 2016.
"I don't want to be a party pooper here, but I don't think it's very funny."
During an interview with Faithwire two years later, Stephen revealed that the political
atmosphere had been so intense, that they hadn't been in contact in years. Stephen told Faithwire:
"I still haven't talked to my brother, Alec,
since the election. And I'm cool with that. I love him to death. ... If you don't like Trump,
do what you got to do. But don't pick on peoples' families. That's not cool."
Although he
has made a name for himself on screen, Alec Baldwin would, in another world,
make it as a voice on the airwaves. Baldwin's choice as a host of the New York Philharmonic's
weekly radio broadcast was a seemingly divine pairing deeply rooted in his connection to
classical music. Baldwin gushed of the genre in a 2009 conversation with The New York Times:
"There's something serious about classical music. There's something beautiful. There's something
that's really carefully rendered, that I want to be a part of, no matter what my contribution is."
It was a connection that the orchestra had kept track of by noting Baldwin's perfect
concert attendance. However, Baldwin's penchant for radio also extends to his
podcast "Here's the Thing," a public radio turned iHeartRadio collaboration that has
dug into the finer details of the lives of newsmakers since 2011. His approach toward
guests leaves room for flexibility, a fact that some of Baldwin's listeners may dispute,
as he remarked in a 2016 interview with PBS NewsHour. The star explained:
"I don't view the show as an interview. I view it as a conversation."
In October 2021, Alec Baldwin found himself involved in a catastrophic turn of events.
While rehearsing a scene on the set of the Western Rust, a prop gun the actor-producer
was holding accidentally went off, wounding director Joel Souza and killing 42-year-old
Ukrainian filmmaker Halyna Hutchins. Baldwin tweeted after the incident:
"There are no words to convey my shock and sadness."
In an ABC News special dubbed "Alec Baldwin Unscripted" that December,
he recounted the incident, attributing it to a misstep with on-set gun handling
protocol. While there was a rule in place to avoid a direct aim at anyone
within production premises, there were exceptions. Baldwin said in the special:
"Unless the person is the cinematographer who's
directing me where to point the gun for her camera angle. That's exactly what happened."
As of February 2023, Baldwin and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed have
been charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, which could warrant an 18-month
jail term and an additional $5000 fine, per CNN. Through a legal representative,
Hutchins' kin showed their trust in the justice system, saying in a statement,
"It is a comfort to the family that, in New Mexico, no one is above the law."
Meanwhile, according to CNN, Baldwin's attorney argued:
"Alec Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun — or
anywhere on the movie set. ... We will fight these charges, and we will win."
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues,
help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).