by Alec Baldwin
Choosing to propose directly on the heels of the court case was, in hindsight, bad timing. My tendency to want to fix everything, and my belief that I can, got the better of me. Was this poor kid from Massapequa now prepared to make someone else’s troubles disappear by supplying the necessary funding? Was I confusing pity with love? Nonetheless, we were married in August of that year. About a hundred friends and family members came. The wedding was held at the home of a friend in East Hampton, on the beach. Naturally, I made all of the arrangements.
The term “fugue state” best describes the remainder of 1993 and all of 1994. Kim almost never worked. When I went on location, she was less inclined than ever to visit me. It seemed like the only laughs we had, the only closeness I actually detected, was during the big Northridge earthquake in January of 1994. The earthquake was the quintessential California rite of passage for me. There were long lines everywhere as San Fernando Valley homeowners struggled to stock up on everything from groceries to gasoline. I’ll never forget these seemingly insignificant, flimsy metal straps that held a hot water heater in place and how I scoured the Valley to buy one. One afternoon, when all the gas lines had been turned off in our neighborhood, ruling out the possibility of cooking at home, I found us a hot meal from a local Italian restaurant that had a generator. When I walked in with the food, it was a scene out of one of those movies where the survivors of a plane crash are rescued in the snowy mountains. I was the hero just by showing up with pasta and a salad.
I went to New Orleans in 1994 to shoot Heaven’s Prisoners with the wonderful Mary Stuart Masterson, who, as Kim seemed to recede more and more, I probably fell in love with while we were shooting. Teri Hatcher, by no means anyone’s first choice for the role of Eric Roberts’s wife, turned out to be tough and brave. (I always enjoy when an actor comes to set and ends up changing your mind about them.) Kim came down once, for a weekend, then flew back to LA to figure out how to get out of the hole she was in. When I was home, appellate lawyers and bankruptcy lawyers called the house regularly, pleading for direction regarding Kim’s case. Kim wouldn’t take their calls, so the responsibility fell to me. Two or three times a week, lawyers asked me for certain direction or approvals, most of which meant more money in fees. Although, eventually, Kim’s verdict was reversed on appeal, the path to that ruling was agonizing.
On New Year’s Day 1995, on the front page of the Sunday business section, the New York Times ran an article entitled “The Basinger Bankruptcy Bomb” about powerful people who had sidestepped significant debt through strategic bankruptcy filings. In it, Kim was portrayed as a capricious, irresponsible woman who flagrantly exploited bankruptcy law, living extravagantly in spite of a pile of bills she refused to pay. (Remember, the verdict was ultimately overturned, providing a textbook example of the kind of case that bankruptcy protection was designed for.) The writer of the article, private investigators later uncovered, lived in Texas, had never come to New York, and had never seen my home in New York or Kim’s home in LA, both of which she described as either “lavish” or a “mansion.” She was wrong on both counts.
After reading the article, Kim vibrated with anger. She spent the day on the phone with her lawyers, wondering what she had to do to catch a break from all of the misrepresentations of both the case and her in the press. That very evening, we were scheduled to fly to Lima and then on to the Peruvian rain forest to shoot a documentary for Turner Broadcasting, but Kim declared that the trip was off. Just the slightest criticism in the press could set her off, and this piece was unfair and inaccurate in several ways, so much so that her attorneys wrote a rebuttal that the Times printed a week later. As we headed to the airport, Kim was brimming over with embarrassment and indignation.
I spent the morning screaming at Kim’s lawyers about how I wanted to kill the Times reporter, perhaps also sensing that all of this wasn’t very good for me either. Kim only sat and glared at me. Yet, somehow, we managed to get in the car and head to the airport to shoot the film, which was about the illegal exportation of exotic birds. The trip up the Tambopata River to the Tambopata Research Center, slightly west of the Bolivian border, was an awkward, uncomfortable experience. The week we spent in mosquito-netted lean-tos with the legendary documentarian Robert Drew, his wife, Anne, and our crew was not what I had envisioned. Our time away from the noise and vulgarity of the US media, however, turned out to be the thing we needed to begin to breathe again.
Once we were back in LA, I decided that we needed to get out of town again, if only for a weekend, to rest and try to reconnect. Marriage is a fragile and, presumably, valuable object. Even as we deliberately smash it on the ground, we are compelled to sweep up all of the pieces and attempt to put it back together. Also, I feared divorce, as I equated it with a deep, personal failure. We drove up to the San Ysidro Ranch for a weekend. Soon after we got back, Kim discovered she was pregnant.
During the first three years Kim and I were together, I had completely cut myself off from thoughts of having a family. With Kim, she led and you followed regarding any important, life-changing decisions. After we were married and throughout her legal battles, any limited talk about children was weighed against how it would stall her career revival. For me, the idea of forgoing a family was difficult. I recall one moment when, watching a man carry his sleeping child through an airport, I said to myself, “I’ll never have children.” I sighed, shoved down those feelings, and boarded a plane to go to work.
Then our daughter, Ireland, was born. The moment that your first child arrives is a transcendent one. And, regardless of the state of our marriage, Ireland’s birth inspired Kim and me to set aside whatever doubts or fears we had and allow the day to be the remarkable event it truly was. Ireland was a healthy, beautiful baby. Like any husband, I spent that day dedicated to providing whatever assistance I could to my wife. But for most of it, I was simply overwhelmed by the arrival of my daughter. At one point, I tried to recall how I imagined this day would play out. This child, this person, is finally arriving; what would she be like? I would stare at Ireland, mesmerized, and say to her tiny being, “My God, it’s you! I wondered who would show up and it’s you!” After sleeping in the chair next to Kim’s hospital bed that first night, I went home to shower. In our bedroom, I lit a candle and thanked God for Ireland and prayed for the health of mother and child. I have lighted a candle or, for lack of one, a match, every night since. Twenty-one years. If I was on a red-eye, heading home to New York, I lit the candle when I arrived home in the early morning. If I’ve missed a night, I am unaware of it, as there’s surely the chance I passed out here and there. But, I don’t think so. Every night, for twenty-one years, I go to sleep and say, “I love you, Ireland.”
When Ireland was an infant, Kim designed a thank-you card for the many thoughtful people who had sent along gifts. The card was perhaps one of the more powerful insights into Kim I had ever come across. On the cover was a naïve illustration that showed a bare tree colored in a muted matte gray. Stuck in one of the high branches was a bright pink ribbon blowing in the wind. There it was, I thought. There was the meaning of Ireland’s arrival in Kim’s life: our child as the only sign of hope, of light, to come into Kim’s world.
My friend Ronnie once said that I had loved Kim the iconoclast who didn’t care what anyone thought. “Little did you know that included you, too,” he quipped. I had felt that I was losing at this game for some time. Everyone wants to believe that they are capable of making someone they love happy, be they a spouse, lover, sibling, or child. I believed that kind of union, that happiness, was my destiny. When you finally face the bitter reality that they will never be happy in the relationship because they are incapable of being happy anywhere, with anyone, you implode. You are powerless.
Love is an object that we hold in our hands. It is visible and it is ours to share. Sometimes, the person you love withholds theirs from you. But it is still there, hidden behind their back, kept from your view. Until one day, the one you love
stands in front of you with both of their hands at their sides and their hands are empty. There is nothing there anymore. Nothing. After Ireland was born, all of the love Kim had went to her child. And every moment we were together after that, the emptiness that resulted moved us toward the inevitable.
11
Of Course, Of Course
The list of men I admire in the movies is quite long. It goes from Lon Chaney Sr. to Gable to Tracy to Fredric March. It includes Mitchum, Clift, Kirk Douglas, Lon Chaney Jr., Michael Douglas, Tyrone Power, James Garner, Burt Lancaster, Yves Montand, Colin Firth, Albert Finney, Robert De Niro, Robert Preston, Paul Newman, Peter O’Toole, Gregory Peck, Maximilian Schell, and Gary Oldman.
My favorite movie actor is William Holden. On-screen, Holden is handsome, graceful, charming, and funny. He is tough and resourceful enough to handle himself in any type of predicament. In a range of films from Golden Boy to The Bridge on the River Kwai and Sabrina, from Sunset Boulevard to Stalag 17 and The Wild Bunch, Holden could do it all. I knew that developing a style like his was not practical. He was an original and tough to imitate. Plus, the scripts in those days were tailored for him. Writers today, in most cases, don’t necessarily write for a particular actor. But what I wouldn’t give to have been born in 1925 or so, to have survived the war and gone on to a career in films in that Golden Age of the 1940s and ’50s.
In small and not so small ways, many young actors seek to latch on to the persona of a particular star and channel that star in their early work. Some newcomers try to bring their Brando, Dean, Mitchum, Pacino, De Niro, or Nicholson to the roles. Women may try, especially when they’re young, to pull in everything from Monroe to Katharine Hepburn. They may try to emulate, not only in terms of style but also career choices, someone who is a contemporary like Meryl Streep, Cherry Jones, or Cate Blanchett. Young actors have to come up with something and haven’t had much experience. So why not steal from the best?
I don’t remember stealing from anyone, at least not in any overt sense. (Maybe a bit from Joe Maher!) But an actor who says they don’t borrow from others in their early years is a liar. I’d see an actor like Edward G. Robinson snarl a line (“Yeah, see?”), and at some point, I’d think, “I’m gonna snarl like Edward G.” Cagney was so cocky—let’s sprinkle a little of that in there. Bogart was so subtle, so silky, yet so playful—let’s layer a little of Bogey into this line. Let your face relax while holding a faint smile, like you just woke up from a nap, like Mitchum. Make the zingers zing, like Nicholson. Say the line with a smoldering, quiet tone, then thunder on the last phrase, like Pacino.
I suppose the contemporary actor who I most wanted to emulate was Pacino. Al’s passion, intensity, and sexuality, all of his now legendary signatures, took my breath away. The scene in Serpico when John Randolph presents Serpico with his gold shield, a bullet hole bored into Al’s face, his indignity, disgust, and rage are barely containable. As Randolph presses the badge onto Al’s chest, Pacino collapses in tears that, to this day, go straight through me. I didn’t want to imitate Al. But I wanted to learn from him. The task was to maintain a reservoir of emotional truth, pain, and love.
Even though Marlon Brando’s film career seems far in the past now, for some he remains a sort of gold standard. No doubt, Brando is a monolithic talent. He reached an undiscovered place in terms of emotional truth and complexity in film acting. And he developed this gift at such a young age. But Brando’s difficult relationship with the business, and with himself, left me wondering when Brando was acting and when he was mocking. His contempt for what he viewed as false or pretentious in Hollywood resonated with me. When he gave his all, the results were incomparable. But it became clear later in his career that he had no intention of giving his all in many films. A battered, fatigued Brando thought that simply showing up was enough. Perhaps actors with Brando’s unmatched talent, and the attendant worship that comes with that, run the risk of such cynicism, even self-destruction.
Movie stardom amplified Brando’s family issues, industry battles, and neuroses, ultimately overwhelming him. Pacino always struck me as different. Pacino seemed focused on balancing his two roles as actor and star, not easy given that his own accomplishments in the movies are legendary. He returned to the theater with some regularity, certainly more than most at his level. Like Nicholson, when it was called for, he left his vanity at home and just played the role, and beautifully, as in Angels in America. In films like The Godfather and Scarface, he put the character’s ugly nature on display. However, in films like Dog Day Afternoon, Carlito’s Way, and Donnie Brasco, his ability to break your heart is like no other. I don’t know about you, but I go to the movies to have my heart broken every now and then, and I’ve always relied on Al to bring that emotional wallop to his films.
Although I studied their work, I could never have Holden’s career, or Brando’s, or Al’s. Those careers are of their time. What I did have was Gus Trikonis’s advice that I simply focus on trying to do my best in whatever film role I landed.
Once the Tom Clancy franchise was out of the equation, I didn’t have to worry about protecting some squeaky-clean image. I learned that if you are willing and have an aptitude for playing an intelligent villain, your options change. Many actors, to this day, shy away from playing the bad guy. Even though those roles can offer great acting opportunities, some stars won’t take the chance that such work might tarnish their image. In the case of stars like Cruise and Hanks, this is understandable. They have towering careers in the movies built upon a combination of integrity and heroics. When I watched Cruise in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, I thought he had won the Oscar. He was riveting. But perhaps someone told him to never do that again and, for Cruise, villainous roles disappeared.
In movies like Malice and The Juror, playing the “negative value” in the script (a phrase I borrowed from the great director Harold Becker) was both fun and not without a cost. Hollywood studio executives, so limited in their creativity, make things easy on themselves by ruling that you can’t be the hero of a film if, in your last one, you stepped onto a school bus with a flamethrower. (Especially in one of their own pictures!) In the ’90s, most of the films I had made after Hunt had underperformed, or were outright turkeys. The Shadow, The Getaway, Heaven’s Prisoners, and The Juror offered me some wonderful experiences, but little luck at the box office.
When Rob Reiner asked me to do Ghosts of Mississippi, I thought that it was a real chance to gain back some ground in terms of my film career. The picture had been developed for Tom Hanks, and when he was unavailable, I got the call. But from the moment Reiner said “Action!,” it was clear to me that he wished it were still Hanks in front of the camera. Back then, Reiner left little to chance and made films only with the biggest stars available. In spite of a very soft script (“Another civil rights story told through the eyes of a white protagonist,” Coretta King complained to Myrlie Evers at the premiere. “Where is Medgar?”), making the film was very gratifying, although it did not succeed. However, in the summer of 1996, a script arrived that I had a hunch was my last real chance to save my movie career.
The first play by David Mamet that I performed in was A Life in the Theatre in 1987 at the old Hartman Theatre in Stamford, Connecticut, directed by A. J. Antoon. In 1972, Antoon held the distinction of being nominated for two Tonys in the same season, winning best director for That Championship Season. Antoon, a remarkably agile director, emphasized the importance of lighting, sets, and how the actor must move on the stage within his design for maximum effect. Antoon died of an AIDS-related illness in 1992, just five years after we worked together.
The piece is a two-hander and one of my favorites by Mamet. The other actor was the great Mike Nussbaum, a veteran of numerous early Chicago productions of Mamet’s work, including this play. Every day I traveled from Grand Central to Stamford during a snowy winter. It was the theater, which means that along with compelling material, there were no frills. In late December, we began rehearsal
s using a banquet room on the second floor of a VFW hall near the theater as a rehearsal space.
Like nearly every actor trained in the past few decades, I am a great admirer of David’s writing. Whether by way of scenes from Sexual Perversity in Chicago attempted in acting classes, our production at the Hartman, or filming Glengarry Glen Ross, I respected his ear for great dialogue. His roles for contemporary men are like no other. The lines that close act one in Oleanna make up some of my favorite writing in the theater. Carol struggles to communicate with her professor, John, saying, “All my life . . .” and stops. John replies, “Go on.” Carol says, “I’ve never told anyone this . . .” And suddenly, John’s phone rings. His wife is calling, and John’s life punctures their halting foreplay. When John hangs up, a humiliated Carol snaps out of her unaccustomed vulnerability. The moment is priceless. Whenever I’ve seen it performed, I gasp slightly and I love teaching it in any class I’ve taught.
In July of 1996, a script arrived from my agent entitled Bookworm, written by Mamet. As was the case on maybe five occasions in my life, I sequestered myself from everyone around me and read the screenplay the moment I opened the envelope. When I was finished, I called my agent to say that I loved it, and in a couple of weeks I was in a conference room in a Beverly Hills hotel with the presumptive director, Lee Tamahori, the producers, and other actors reading the smaller roles. Playing the other lead role was Robert De Niro. I was, obviously, beside myself with the prospect of working with Bob. However, the character was named Charles Morse, and as tycoons go, De Niro is more Stavros Niarchos. De Niro did the reading and decided he didn’t want to play the part.
