Alex Baldwin Say Good Bye to Public Life

Alec Baldwin and his wife had a baby in 2013, but other than that, he admits in an essay over on Vulture, everything was “pretty awful.” In an honest, often rambling, occasionally funny, and always bitter series of diatribes told to Joe Hagan, the actor claims he’s going to retire permanently from public life. The decision stems from a now-infamous encounter with TMZ paparazzo, who accused Baldwin of using a homophobic slur when the photographer approached Baldwin’s wife Hilaria and their baby. Baldwin denied it, saying he used the word “fathead,” but according to him, this is when the public turned against him.

He goes on to discuss his failed stint as a talk show host on MSNBC, and his contentious relationship with Shia LaBeouf during production for a stage play called Orphans (LaBeouf was fired, and the show closed early). There’s a lot of blaming going on, and while some of it is justified, it’s hard not to feel that Baldwin’s victim complex is a huge part of the problem.
“Now I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible,” Baldwin says. “I used to engage with the media knowing that some of it would be adversarial, but now it’s superfluous at best and toxic at its worst.”
And so he’s retiring from public life, at least for now. When you finish the essay, if you’re like me, you’ll hope Baldwin can stick to his guns and try to recover some peace outside the public eye.