No other actor has had a career like the one he has Alec Baldwinguest of this episode of Hollywood Reporter‘s Awards talks The podcast, which was recorded in front of an audience at the Boulder International Film Festival last Friday.
The 68-year-old has anchored blockbuster films (The Search for Red October(and the famous islands of India)Radiator). He starred in a film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture (The departed(Best Comedy Series, Emmy Award Winner)30 Rock). He hosted Saturday Night Live (More than anyone else – 17 times) and the Academy Awards (in 2010, with Steve Martin). Along the way, he has personally received three Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and seven Actor Awards for Individual Performance, in addition to Oscar and Tony nominations.
Baldwin also faced a turbulent time as a public figure. For the past 40 years, the paparazzi and tabloids have been fixated on him, and he has not always behaved in a way that would dampen their interest. Then on October 21, 2021 on set Rusta low-budget independent film he was starring in and producing in New Mexico, a tragic accident occurred: a gun was handed to him to use in a scene, and had supposedly already been inspected by a gunsmith to ensure it was unloaded, but when the gun was fired (Baldwin said he did not pull the trigger), a live round came out, killing the cinematographer. Halina Hutchins The director was injured Joel Souza.
As a result, Baldwin’s last few years were a somewhat unpleasant ride, as chronicled in the Oscar-nominated film. Rory KennedyThe new documentary The trial of Alec Baldwin. In January 2023, Baldwin was charged with manslaughter, but in April 2023, that charge was dropped. Then, in January 2024, he was again charged with manslaughter. But in July 2024, three days into his trial, all charges against him were dropped with prejudice after the judge found that authorities had deliberately withheld evidence from his defense team. Baldwin was acquitted, but his life would never be the same.
Over the course of this interview in Boulder, Baldwin wowed an audience of hundreds with colorful anecdotes, voice impressions and physical comedy bits. He also spoke, perhaps to a greater extent than ever before, about Rust The tragedy, the toll it had on his health and how it affected his expectations for the future. You can listen to the full conversation via the audio player near the top of this post or any major podcast app, or you can read some memorable excerpts from it below.
On working with Hollywood studios…
“This is the best way to define movie studios and producers, and I’ll try to tone it down and not make it too cliche: They go to your mother’s house and rape your mother. They attack your mother. They beat her. They rape your mother. They take the whole weekend to rape your mother. It’s a terrible, horrible thing. After 18 months, you meet them at a party or a show and they say, ‘Man, I’m sorry, I know we raped your mother, but I got a really good script for you, so let’s do business.'”
in office –The Search for Red October decision to do A Streetcar Named Desire On Broadway…
“When I did TramYou changed my life. You have changed my life in ways I never thought possible. And although I lost a lot in the process — it was the beginning of me moving away from playing lead roles in studio films and doing a lot of independent films — I wouldn’t change anything because the play was a really unusual experience for me. I loved it.
On his cameo in Spike Lee BlackKkKlansman…
“He gives me a monologue, I memorize everything and go to his studio in Brooklyn, 40 Acres [and a Mule Filmworks] – He has a small floor with some staging, and he shoots things there if they’re minimal, if it’s not like a big sweeping thing. So we’re shooting there – he took me there early in the morning, I was tired, I had my lines memorized – and he said, “I changed the script.” I want you to save this.’ And I say “fuck.” They put makeup on me, and I’m half-dead, and I’m binge drinking coffee, and I go out there and say, “I’m going to give you the best I can, but I’m going to have to work for this.” I don’t think I could really get it unless I went for an hour and tried to memorize this. I really don’t do that. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. So when I do that, I keep getting flustered, and I say some choice words, I’m really angry. I’m sitting there saying, “Everyone here, I want you all to remember that — damn, damn, damn, damn.” I got it. I got it. ‘You’ve got to remember the only time we went down like this was when… Oh God, damn, damn, damn.’ And he puts it in the movie! My friend says to me: I went to see BlackKkKlansman.’ I said: How was it? He said, ‘Man, everything you were doing in Tourette’s in the beginning was great.’ Man, that was so cool. Who gave you that idea? That crazy shit you were doing, man, you were great. I’m calling him [Spike] On the phone I say: “You son of a bitch.” He wanted the guy to fumble around and curse – he’s not a professional – so he put that in the movie. He never told me. So the film industry is difficult.
About how he ended up impersonating Donald Trump SNL…
“Lorne called me[aboutholdingthepre-2016election[aboutdoingapre-2016electionSNL posing as Trump]and I said, “I want to go see this movie at East Stanford with my friends.” The great photographer and artist Bruce Weber made a documentary about Robert Mitchum. And Lorne goes [sarcastically]’Well, good for you.’ good for you. Don’t you want to come and be part of the hottest comedy sketches of the year? You can go watch your documentary about Robert Mitchum. So I come in and do it, and he’s like, “It’s only going to be two shows, man.” He will never win. [Flash forward to] I’m lying in bed with my wife on election night. We do not have a TV in our room. I got my computer. We’re both asleep. It’s three o’clock. I wake up, [check the result] I turned to my wife and said: He won. “He won.” And my wife literally says, “Oh.” She groans. Then I say, “I have to do this thing for the next four years!” I will be asked to do this for four years! So you start watching his tapes. In acting school, they taught us to watch takes with the sound off. The sound finally comes. So I watch footage of him and say, “Oh, he makes a lot of weird gestures and his face is always frowning.”
On the tragedy on the set of RustHow this led to him working less and wanting to retire…
“We had this incident, this tragedy, in New Mexico, where Halina Hutchins was killed while filming the movie, and it was very difficult to deal with… Because of the situation in New Mexico, which was so traumatic, I ended up staying home a lot. I was home with my kids for three and a half years — I barely worked at all — and that’s changing now. I’ll go and do a bunch of stuff. But I’ve been home and I’m used to it.” I don’t want to leave my house anymore, and I don’t want to work anymore.
About the backstory of Rory Kennedy’s new documentary The trial of Alec Baldwin…
Rory said, “Do you want to do this movie?” I want to do this movie about you. “And I thought, ‘Oh.’ And we filmed it – they were there during the trial in New Mexico, and they were interviewing me, and she was always asking for a little more time: ‘Can I come with you for 20 minutes here?’… We got the lights and the camera. There was a lot of that during the trial – before and during – and I think the film captures what it was like outside of the prosecution; it was people who had committed a crime. They had committed the crime of concealing evidence during my trial and so on. And it affected me in every way – financially, And professionally, my wife, my kids, my health, I was so sick, I mean we had to go back and finish the movie Rust In Montana as part of the settlement with her husband. We had to finish. We gave him the film and told him: Sell it and do whatever you want with it. So I had to go [finish the film]And I was really sick A – I was suffering from a neurological condition that you get when you take blood pressure medications, orthostatic hypotension, where you lose consciousness. I passed out three times over St. Patrick’s Day weekend that year, and fell on top of my wife once. He was crazy. It was terrible. So I go to bed. I’ve been in bed for eight days. I can’t get out of bed. I can’t walk. I had to go to physical therapy for two weeks. I had to get back on horseback to Montana to finish the film, otherwise they were going to sue me. So it worked – I got there, and I’m not giving the performance I want to give because I’m sick, but I did my best. And Rory is making this movie. Now, the movie is out [it premiered at DOC NYC last November but didn’t screen again until Boulder]And when someone makes a movie about you, you’ll never be happy. You will have a lot of notes. I didn’t [give her notes] Because it’s not a commission – I’m not telling her what to do, that’s her job. I think there are a lot of good things in the movie. I think she’s a great filmmaker. There are many things I could say, but I will sum it up with one thing. A very famous lawyer in New York said to me: Have you ever believed that someone did this to you? [intentionally left bullets in the gun that was not supposed to be loaded but shot Hutchins] intentionally? Was there some kind of conspiracy or something? That someone was behind it? I say: If I had to answer this question, the answer is no, because it is unlikely. It is very difficult to do this. However, there were three or four things that I found very strange that happened on and around the day she died. And this lawyer turned to me and said, “You know what? This makes me wonder what’s going on here in your case.” I go, “What?” “Because after they couldn’t catch you, it was over,” she says. They never tried to find the other people responsible for what happened, who brought the bullets to the set. You never hear about that. They do not follow up on the case. They don’t do anything. They tried to get me, but they couldn’t get me. They cheated and broke the law to get me, and it was hard. Wait one second. I’m going to do something here. Let me see if I can solve this. I am waiting. We’ll do this very quickly. [Baldwin Facetimes his wife, Hilaria, and addresses her in front of the audience.] …I told them if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have survived all of this Rust situation, so thank you.
