Even Alec Baldwin called himself a bad actor: “I don’t think I really have a talent”
Alec Baldwin is an incredibly divisive figure, and for good reason.
On one hand, he’s clearly a talented, funny actor who’s done a lot of work for good causes and is unafraid to speak up for what he believes in, but on the other hand, his personal life is littered with controversies, like the bizarre voice note he left in the wake of his divorce from Kim Basinger, in which he called his then-11-year-old daughter, Ireland, a “thoughtless little pig”.
Then, of course, is the recent incident on the set of Rust that led to the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins is a black mark against his name that will never be erased, but part of what makes it so hard to process this heinous incident, which will now be the subject of a civil trial, is that Baldwin has been a part of so many movies that so many people adore.
Early in his career, he lit up the screen in such cult hits as Working Girl and Beetlejuice, before establishing himself as a leading man with The Hunt for Red October, and even his performance in Glengarry Glen Ross, which only lasted around eight minutes, is regarded as one of the finest ever committed to celluloid.
In an interview with The New Yorker back in 2008, Baldwin made a rather odd claim about his career up to that point, where he wasn’t denying his abilities as an actor, but he didn’t rate himself too highly as a film star. “I don’t think I really have a talent for movie acting,” he admitted, “I’m not bad at it, but I don’t think I really have a talent for it… There’s a mix you have to have where the character is vulnerable, the character is up against it, but there’s still a glimmer of resourcefulness in his eye.”
When it comes to actors he thinks are good on screen, Baldwin has a penchant for the classics, like he is a massive fan of Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino, both of whom he has shared the set with, on The Departed and Glengarry Glen Ross, respectively.
He highlighted Nicholson’s portrayal of Randle MacMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Pacino’s turn as the eponymous character in Serpico as his personal favourites, and as for a performer he didn’t think always worked in movies, he opted for Orson Welles, saying, “Welles was a powerful actor, but he wasn’t always a great actor”.
Ask any performer lucky enough to have done both, and they’ll tell you that acting for the screen is way different than acting onstage, because in the former, you have to play to the camera rather than an actual audience, which can feel unnatural. Moreover, there’s also less pressure to remember your lines, which sounds like a good thing, but it can encourage laziness and complacency.
Of course, anyone who has seen Baldwin in a movie knows that he is good at screen acting, but actors are weird perfectionists, though; he could win five Oscars back-to-back and still think he was rubbish.
