Alec Baldwin: The Accidental Actor

Q: After you made The Hunt for Red October you were supposed to do the sequel, Patriot Games, but it wound up conflicting with the opportunity for you to do A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway, Were you sorry not to have continued the character?

A: What I loved about that character [Jack Ryan] and why I was so sad that I didn't get to play him in the other movie was that it was a chance to have a real development. To start here and end up there.

Q: Do you think The Shadow might offer you that kind of sequel potential?

A: It's interesting that you say that because I've never thought about this movie that way, but I would hope so. After I did Red October, I really wanted to do Patriot Games because I liked the idea of a guy who didn't want to be a spy. But I always felt that the chance to play that kind of a part will come again. The opportunity to do Tennessee Williams on Broadway will never come again.

Q: Is the theater where you go to replenish yourself as an actor?

A: I go to the theater as often as I can, for medicinal purposes. I get so down about doing movies because all the politics of it can be enormously draining. I go to the theater to see actors--Victor Garber, one of the greatest stage actors in America, Amanda Plummer, Joe Maher, Frank Langella, John Lithgow, Nathan Lane--who's more entertaining than Nathan Lane? Virtuoso acting is so rare. It gets me high. I want to be a part of that. More than the movies.

Q: Is that what you felt you did in Streetcar?

A: No. I've never done it. I've never actually achieved it. Streetcar was an opportunity to do it, but I don't think I reached it. I didn't have the experience I wanted to.

Q: Why not?

A: Because it didn't turn out the way people hoped. Some people who will remain nameless went in thinking if they just threw up the names of the people involved in this on a Broadway theater in the climate of that time, that we only had to say the name of the play, the playwright, the director, the actors, that we could just stomp the universe and become the biggest show in New York. The producers were very cavalier.

Q: What about your own performance?

A: I'm getting back to taking acting very seriously, which I didn't for a long time. I really hated it and was fed up with it--15 years out of the 35 of my life is quite a bit of time. You have actors who begin at a certain young age and there's very little change in their technique and the depth of their performances; they're the same 30 years later. And then there are those who show gradations of change in their acting, and that's a great thing to witness. And then there are the rarest and the greatest actors who knocked you on your ass from a very early age--the level of self-awareness, the level of emotional complexity and understanding, of self-control and presence. Great acting can be almost a psychotic mix of self-consciousness and unself-consciousness. And that's the terrible conflict. You have to be free to jump off into that volcano and you have to be pathologically self-conscious.

Q: Who are the actors you respect and admire today?

A: I like Holly Hunter a lot, she's a really good actress. I like Sean Penn, Eric Roberts. When I spoke to Pacino about Brando I said the great thing about him was how much of an ass he really made of himself. When you watch Mutiny on the Bounty and you see Brando's supercilious speech pattern, very irritating [doing Brando], it's kind of like William Shatner meets Quentin Crisp. You don't know what it is. He drives you nuts for 30 minutes. And Al's great line was: "Yeah, you're watching it and you're going, 'No, no, he's going to go over there, no, don't do it.' Like he's going to go off a cliff." And then he grabs you by the throat.

Q: You interviewed Pacino for your NYU thesis paper, right?

A: Yes. I basically discovered a kindred spirit on some levels, in terms of making assessments of what works and what doesn't. I'm not saying that my experiences mirror his, but Al talked about being at work and wanting to maintain an emotional neutrality. I was fascinated when he said this. Because the winds of your emotions can take you this way and then you have to get back on course, so I'd rather be on a neutral course. If I have to do an emotionally fraught scene, I don't necessarily want to go there and idle in that locale all day. Like to do Raging Bull--what kind of a place did De Niro have to stay in? I don't even want to know the answer.

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