Billy Baldwin: William Tells

Q: When was the last time you got into it with Daniel?

A: Five years ago. The last time I got into a fight with him, we knocked my mother's teeth out. That stopped it right away.

Q: Well, that would. Did she have to go to the hospital?

A: No.

Q: How many teeth?

A: Two or three.

Q: Like onto the floor?

A: Flying out.

Q: If the Baldwins were to go on "Family Feud," what categories would you excel at?

A: I would think politics, history, arts and entertainment, and sports,

Q: What categories would you suck at?

A: Mathematics. I suck at anything I don't like or find interesting.

Q: Your driver, Joe, told me he's impressed with the way you keep in touch with your old friends.

A: It's interesting he made that observation. When you're in this business, whether or not it goes well, it can be equally frightening and volatile. My best friend functions in ways in my life that I think he isn't aware of. His name is Chris Bevilacqua and when 1 spend time with Bevy, which is all the time; it reminds me of a time when things were OK, when it wasn't as overwhelming--like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, you know? No responsibility whatsoever.

Q: Speaking of that time in your life, did you get a facts-of-life talk from your parents?

A: No, I learned on my own. It was just, you know, on-the-job training.

Q: [I present Baldwin with a photo of myself and a friend book-ending the ladies of Wilson Phillips, back-stage after a 1990 concert in Tokyo.] I suppose I should probably tell you I had an affair with Chynna Phillips.

A: Chynna, look at her. She looks so great.

Q: What's she up to?

A: She's recording, trying to wrap up her solo album, then she's doing a TV movie with Jason Alexander, and then she's going to do a Wilson Phillips album.

Q: I've prepared a little "W.P." lyric quiz for you.

A: Uh-oh, I don't know if I can hang. It you refer to them as "W.P.." then you must be a big fan. Ask Chynna if she knows the dialogue to my movies!

Q: Question one: In the song "Hold On"...

A: You tell me what that song is about.

Q: It's about, I don't know, holding on?

A: The expression "one day at a time"--you know what that refers to?

Q: A bad sitcom with Bonnie Franklin?

A: No. Twelve Step. "Hold On" is a sobriety song.

Q: Whose sobriety inspired it?

A: Well, Chynna wrote it. It's just something she's seen and been around.

Q: The two of you are now engaged. Where did you pop the question?

A: In a suite at the Carlyle Hotel in New York. Pal, it was awesome. I had this running joke with Chynna where, whenever I would get a paycheck, she'd say, "Great, hon, why don't you buy me a dress?" For months, she'd say, "When you gonna buy me that dress?" So jump-cut to our engagement night. She thought we were going to a Christmas party, and when we got off the elevator I'd arranged to have the door unlocked, because if I'd had a key it would have given it away. So I knock and nobody answers and she says, "Honey, it's a party, just go in," so I pushed the door open and in the archway into the suite there's this huge Vera Wang wedding dress. And she looks at the dress and looks back at me like. 'This is a weird party." And then she just pushed the Vera Wang dress aside and saw that, inside the suite--on the chaise and the grand piano and the couch and the chairs and the drapes and all the molding around the room--there were wedding dresses from wail-to-wall. The whole suite was all different sizes and shapes of wedding dresses, just tons of them. There was like 60 bouquets of flowers, and the lights were off, with 200 candles burning. And there were vines of ivy on the bed and flowing onto the floor, with giant white orchids all over the bed. Really beautiful.

Q: Did she melt into a puddle, never to be heard from again?

A: She just started spinning around, looking at all the dresses and saying, "Oh my God, oh my God, I can't believe it." When she stopped, I was standing there with a little box in my hand. She just flipped out. It was great.

Q: Did you get down on one knee?

A: Sure did. Of course I did.

Q: What music was playing?

A: Some Van Morrison, Roxy Music, Seal, Al Green, stuff like that.

Q: Where did the dresses come from?

A: Vera Wang's [bridal] store is on the ground floor of the Carlyle, so we were able to get racks and racks of dresses. We had a camera and we tried some on.

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