Alec Baldwin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alec Baldwin
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Baldwin in 2018
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Alexander Rae Baldwin III
April 3, 1958 Amityville, New York, U.S.
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| Education | George Washington University, New York University – Tisch (BFA) |
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| Years active | 1980–present |
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Works
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Filmography |
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| Children | 8, including Ireland Baldwin |
| Family | Baldwin |
| Awards | Full list |
Alexander Rae Baldwin III (born April 3, 1958) is an American actor. He is known for his leading and supporting roles in a variety of genres, from comedy to drama, and has received numerous accolades including three Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and Tony Award.
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Early life and education
Alexander Rae Baldwin III was born on April 3, 1958, in Amityville, New York, and raised in the Nassau Shores neighborhood of nearby Massapequa, the eldest son of Carol Newcomb (née Martineau; December 15, 1929 – May 26, 2022) from Syracuse, New York and Alexander Rae Baldwin Jr. (October 26, 1927 – April 15, 1983), a high school history/social studies teacher and football coach from Brooklyn. He has three younger brothers, Daniel (b. 1960), William (b. 1963), and Stephen (b. 1966), who also became actors. He also has two sisters, Elizabeth "Beth" Baldwin Keuchler (b. 1955) and Jane Ann Baldwin Sasso (b. 1965).
Alec and his siblings were raised as Roman Catholics. They are of Irish, French, and English ancestry. Through his father, Baldwin is descended from Mayflower passenger John Howland, and through this line, is the 13th generation of his family born in North America and the 14th generation to live in North America.
Baldwin attended Alfred G. Berner High School in Massapequa and played football there under Coach Bob Reifsnyder. In New York City, Baldwin worked as a busboy at the famed discotheque, Studio 54. From 1976 to 1979, he attended George Washington University. In 1979, he lost the election for student body president and received a personal letter from former U.S. president Richard Nixon (with whom he had a common friend) encouraging him to use the loss as a learning experience.
Afterward, he transferred to the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University (NYU) where he studied with, among others, Geoffrey Horne and Mira Rostova at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Later, he was accepted as a member of the Actors Studio. In 1994, he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at NYU.
Career
Baldwin first gained recognition by appearing on the sixth and seventh seasons of primetime soap opera Knots Landing (1984–1985). In the early part of his film career he played both leading and supporting roles in Beetlejuice (1988), Working Girl (1988), Married to the Mob (1988) and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). He played Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October (1990). He received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Cooler (2003) and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor for It's Complicated (2010). He has acted in the films The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Along Came Polly (2004), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), To Rome with Love (2012), Blue Jasmine (2013), Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) and Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018). He voiced the titular role in The Boss Baby film franchise.
From 2006 to 2013, Baldwin received critical acclaim starring alongside Tina Fey as Jack Donaghy on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, winning two Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and seven Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actor in a comedy series, making him the male performer with the most SAG Awards in history. Baldwin has received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Donald Trump on the NBC sketch series Saturday Night Live, a role that won him his third Primetime Emmy in 2017. He was nominated again in 2018 and 2021.
Baldwin made his Broadway debut in Loot (1986). He portrayed Stanley Kowalski in the 1992 production of A Streetcar Named Desire for which he earned a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination. He returned to Broadway in Twentieth Century (2004) and Orphans (2013). He hosted the 82nd Academy Awards in 2010. He is also a columnist for The Huffington Post. He was the host of Match Game from 2016 until 2021.
In 2017, he took over as sole host of TCM's The Essentials following the death of his co-host, Robert Osborne. In August 2017, Baldwin's production company, El Dorado Pictures, signed a first-look deal with ABC Studios. His 2017 memoir Nevertheless debuted at No. 5 on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list.
Acting credits and accolades
Baldwin has also received a number of awards and nominations throughout his career for stage, television, and film roles. He has been nominated for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Tony Award and has received three Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and eight Screen Actors Guild Awards.
On May 12, 2010, Baldwin gave a commencement address at New York University and was awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts degree, honoris causa.
Baldwin was named Esteemed Faculty by Stony Brook University after teaching a master class in acting at Stony Brook Southampton.
Philanthropy
Baldwin, along with his mother Carol, created the Carol M. Baldwin Cancer Research Fund in 1996, and dedicated the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Care Center at the Stony Brook University Hospital in her honor. During his 2010–2013 stint as a spokesperson for Capital One, Baldwin's contract was written to fund Baldwin's charity foundation. He was paid $15 million over nearly five years. After taxes and accounting fees, the remainder, $14.125 million, was given to charity.
In March 2011, Baldwin donated $1 million to the New York Philharmonic (on whose board he served), and $500,000 to the Roundabout Theatre Company, where he has performed plays in New York. In recent years, his foundation has donated bookstore gift certificates to Long Island libraries to support literacy programs.
Personal life
Baldwin was briefly engaged in 1983 to actress Janine Turner. He also dated Lori Loughlin, Lori Singer, Holly Gagnier and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Marriages
Kim Basinger
In 1990, Baldwin met actress Kim Basinger when they played lovers in the film The Marrying Man. They married on August 19, 1993, and had a daughter, Ireland (b. October 23, 1995). They separated on December 5, 2000 and divorced on September 3, 2002. Baldwin has called the attorneys in the case "opportunists", and characterized Basinger's psychologists as part of the "divorce industry". In his memoir, he stated that he blamed them more than Basinger, writing that "She is a person, like many of us, doing the best she can with what she has."
In his memoir, Baldwin stated that these issues placed stress on his relationship with his daughter. Baldwin wrote that he had to spend over a million dollars, put time aside from his career, travel extensively, and find a house in California, having previously lived in New York, in order to stay in his daughter's life.
Hilaria Baldwin
By August 2011, Baldwin began dating Hilaria Thomas, a yoga instructor with Yoga Vida in Manhattan. Baldwin and Thomas moved from the Upper West Side to Greenwich Village that August. The couple became engaged in April 2012 and married on June 30, 2012, at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in New York City. They have seven children together. The Baldwin family have taped a reality show, "The Baldwins," set to air on TLC in 2025.
Health and dieting
Baldwin and his wife are pescatarians who eat a predominantly plant-based diet with fish and eggs. Baldwin gave up eating beef in 1991 and is a supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In 2019, he authored an article for CNN supporting the EAT Lancet report and recommended a plant-based diet due to global environmental issues.
See also
In Spanish: Alec Baldwin para niños
