Alec Baldwin is not exactly a withholding sort of person, as his new memoir “Nevertheless” makes clear.
The actor, now voicing the title role in the DreamWorks Animation hit “The Boss Baby” and regularly impersonating President Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live,” unleashes a torrent about his life and career — as well as his many co-stars over the years.
Here are some of the highlight stories in the new book.
1. He’s still pissed Harrison Ford replaced him as Jack Ryan
Baldwin played the CIA operative Jack Ryan in 1990’s “The Hunt for Red October” — but was stunned when Harrison Ford took over the role for the 1992 sequel “Patriot Games.” Baldwin writes that director John McTiernan had asked Ford if he was aware Paramount was still negotiating with Baldwin. “Ford’s reply, according to John, was ‘F– him,’” Baldwin writes.
Later, meeting the star at an L.A. benefit, Baldwin writes: “Ford, in person, is a little man, short, scrawny and wiry, whose soft voice sounds as if it’s coming from behind a door.”
We aren’t taking sides here, but a quick Google search indicates that Baldwin stands 6 feet to Ford’s 6’1.
2. “Ben Affleck is a prince”
Baldwin is rather dismissive of Michael Bay’s 2001 WWII epic “Pearl Harbor” — “at three hours the movie was severely bloated” — but he offers high (if cryptic) praise for the film’s young star: “Ben Affleck is a prince.”
3. Whitney Houston‘s ego was almost as big as his
Baldwin recalled hosting “SNL” when Whitney Houston was the musical guest and approaching her backstage after her dress rehearsal. “‘You truly are the most talented singer out there today,’ I said, a bit starstruck. She paused and said, ‘I know, baby,’ then walked on.”
4. Jeffrey Katzenberg‘s diss: “I can get the guard at the gate to play your role”
When he was shooting the 1991 clunker “The Marrying Man” with Kim Basinger, studio boss Jeffrey Katzenberg tried to put him in his place by telling him that “actors were employees and expected to do their jobs and create as little trouble as possible. ‘I can get the guard at the gate to play your role. It makes no difference to me. The film itself is the star,’ he exhorted.”
5. He overdosed on cocaine while shooting “Knots Landing” in the 1980s
Playing a recurring role in the 1980s primetime soap “Knots Landing,” Baldwin passed out in an Oregon hotel room after binging on cocaine and alcohol. He wound up in an ER, where he slept for 36 hours. “I went to work and never spoke with anyone about what happened. The girl who drove me to the hospital simply said, ‘Are you OK?’ as if I had poison ivy.” But he was soon attending Cocaine Anonymous and AA meetings and got sober.
6. The Secret Service is no match for his mom
When hosting an event at this East Hampton home for then-President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, he heeded a request by the Secret Service to set aside one bathroom as off-limits to everyone but POTUS. “When the president was eventually escorted to it, he found it locked,” Baldwin wrote. When his own mother eventually emerged — after much knocking by Secret Service agents — “I moaned the most theatrical ‘Moooooooooom’ you could imagine. The president of the United States put his arm around my shoulder and said, ‘Don’t worry, Alec. I understand. I’ve got a mother, too.’”
7. He didn’t know his romantic co-star was still a teenager
Baldwin recalled that when he shot the 2006 indie “Mini’s First Time,” he played a man having an affair with his stepdaughter. “I was forty-seven, and it never occurred to me to ask how old Nikki Reed was. When I found out, just as we finished, that she was seventeen, I flipped out on the producers, who had told me something different.”
8. He still regrets that voicemail he left his daughter
He also discusses the notoriously threatening, foul-mouthed voicemail he left for his daughter Ireland in 2007 in the midst of a custody battle with ex-wife Kim Basinger — a recording that was leaked to Harvey Levin’s TMZ. “My relationship with Ireland has healed,” Baldwin wrote. “But just as something that has been broken is never quite the same, the fragile years of childhood that are battered by high-conflict divorce are irreversibly affected … the worst thing one can do is put a child in the middle of those battles. That is what I did. And I am reminded of it and am sorry for it every day.”