My goal was always to take a talk show to the network. I never wanted to be on MSNBC.
— Alec Baldwin
There's a way I could have done things differently. I know that. If I offended anyone along the way, I do apologize.
Am I a homophobe? Look, I work in show business. I am awash in gay people, as colleagues and as friends.
I worked all the time. Every moment I wasn't working, I was home with my family. I got divorced. And now I'm doing it all over again, and I've learned that the key is, I've got to work less.
I won every award you could win in television. I got paid well. And people loved '30 Rock'. And I loved '30 Rock'. I mean, sometimes you do a show that's a hit show, and you hate it.
I've had a relatively charmed life. I loved to be out in the city. New York was my town. I've had people come up to me and say, 'You're a great New Yorker. You've given your time and money to so many New York charities. You're a great supporter of the arts. I like some of your movies - and some of your movies suck, actually.'
Everything I do is about my kids and wife and how we can all be together.
There's almost no popular music I listen to now. I'll hear it because it's everywhere... Music is ubiquitous now.
Being able to stay home with my children is what I prefer.
There are shows that are monolithic successes on TV that nobody in the business ever watches one episode of.
Hollywood does draw some very strange characters, and then the power of Hollywood and what they can do with it becomes like a blood sport to them.
Have I thought about having more kids? Oh sure, that would be great; that would be heaven. That would be fantastic.
My wife is the greatest person I have ever known. She is just a living doll; she is great person and a great mom. We have a girl and a boy, and we are going to have another boy.
I'd rather live my life off screen and give only a certain amount of energy to the work.
Grown-ups yell. I don't know why, but they do.
In the film business, when you're young, you just want to work. But when you're older, it has more to do with who's involved with the project - who you're going to get in the boat with.
I had a marriage that I came to in the same way everybody else comes to a marriage. We all take chances when we get married.
I find myself bitter, defensive, and more misanthropic than I care to admit.
It's good-bye to public life in the way that you try to communicate with an audience playfully, like we're friends, beyond the work you are actually paid for.
Everything I hated about L.A. I'm beginning to crave. L.A. is a place where you live behind a gate, you get in a car, your interaction with the public is minimal. I used to hate that.
I started out as an actor, where you seek to understand yourself using the words of great writers and collaborating with other creative people. Then I slid into show business, where you seek only an audience's approval whether you deserve it or not.
I know there's an impression that I'm someone who seeks to have violent confrontations with people. I don't. Do I regret screaming at some guy who practically clipped my kid in the head with the lens of a camera? Yeah, I probably do, because it's only caused me problems.
I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible.
I'm going to stop giving too much money to charity - the charity is going to become my family. I'm only half-kidding.
I turned popular music on the radio, and I never listened to it again after that, in about 1985. That's when I switched over to classical music, and I pretty much stayed with that since then.
I have always wanted to do a show where I could stay home. When you make movies, you might as well take a dart and throw it at a map.
I don't try to communicate with my 'audience'. I don't bother with that any more. I used to try to have conversations with people, but it's futile.
My brothers were funny, and there was a lot of shtick and comedy and nastiness and violence and fighting and sports.
As my friend said to me, when you have children, typically in a second marriage, when you're older and you get married again to a woman who would have children, you must always remember that you make sure the children attend a college where the commencement ceremonies are held in a facility with a wheelchair accessible ramp.
My father would chaperone at high-school dances, and the toughest guy in the high school used to want to fight my father. My father broke his hand on a guy's head once in school.
You have a lot of optimism when you are young.
I collect travel alarm clocks. I was in a flea market in France once, in 1994, and I opened up this beautiful Jaeger-LeCoultre folding eight-day winding clock folded into a beautiful case, and I went, 'Wow, man.' And I've been collecting travel alarm clocks since 1994.
I don't want to be throwing the football on the front yard when I'm 75. I mean, I'm not opposed to men doing that. But I don't think it's gonna work for me.
I think I do want to go into politics. I really, really do. And I don't know if I will.
I think Rachel Maddow is quite good at what she does. I also think she's a phony who doesn't have the same passion for the truth off-camera that she seems to have on the air.
I'm doing 'Rock of Ages' one day, making out with Russell Brand. Soon after that, I'm advocating with Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Cynthia Nixon for marriage equality.
I need to be home more. That's the goal now. I have a steady flow of things people want me to do.
I want to go make a movie and be very present for that and give it everything I have, and after we're done, then the rest of the time is mine.
I haven't changed, but public life has. It used to be you'd go into a restaurant, and the owner would say, 'Do you mind if I take a picture of you and put it on my wall?' Sweet and simple. Now, everyone has a camera in their pocket.
My children are the only thing in my life that makes me happy.
There are some times when you make films and you travel places, and the take that people in the business have is that the worst way to see a city is to shoot there, because you work these long 12, 13 and 14-hour days, and you go home to the hotel, you eat, and you pass out.
I know some people who live this much more insulated life in Los Angeles, where their feet never touch public ground. They walk out of their bathroom, their living room, they get into their garage, their car, and the next thing you know, they're at the valet parking of the restaurant or the store or the office. They're in a bubble the whole time.
People don't understand this: if you want to have a really good shot at succeeding, there are doors you have to slam in people's faces and say, 'This is my priority, and you can't depend on me to help you.' I was never good at that.
When you lack a certain vitality in the film business, there's no hiding it. It's like you've had your limb chopped off. How do you hide the fact that you're missing an arm?
I think I'm just like a lot of people who had nothing. We had to amuse ourselves, so we had to become amusing.
I have my older daughter Ireland and my wife Hilaria, and I have Carmen and Rafael.
On a television show, precise acting isn't the order of the day.
We all have that moment when we think, 'Hand me that Oscar now - you don't even have to have the ceremony'.
I consider myself a pretty good conversationalist, but you wind up being downgraded to idiot status when you don't speak the language!
When you're with someone, you want everything to be great. And that's the pressure that you put on, and what you just can't do.
