Guardian Review

The actor and comedian has been through a tough childhood, a messy breakup and an overdose -- and he has axes to grind In the preface to his memoir, the actor Alec Baldwin levels with the reader. "I'm not actually writing this book to discuss my work, my opinions or my life," he says. "I'm not writing it to explain some of the painful situations I've either landed in or thrown myself into. I'm writing it because I was paid to write it." This, says Baldwin, is his "mercenary force" at work, something that has guided his decisions since childhood, when he was forced to take on adult responsibilities. At the age of 12 he realised that if he wanted money, he'd have to make it himself, and so he took jobs washing cars and mowing lawns. A chunk of his earnings went to his mother, who would be found crying at the kitchen table after pillaging the money his sister Jane had made selling cookies as a Girl Scout. "The 40 or 50 dollars she was short was, uncannily, the amount of money I had in my pocket at that moment," he recalls. "And whoosh, out it came, she took it, no more tears." Baldwin's main motivator, though, was a desire to please his father, a schoolteacher who was crushed at not being able to make enough money to meet the needs of his family, and wanted his son to do better. There is, naturally, a qualifier to Baldwin's early declaration regarding this book. While he was initially lured by a pay cheque, he soon succumbed to a desire to "share the truth, as well as my remorse, about some of the incautious choices I've made and subsequent difficult times I've lived through in public ... Writing this book presented me with a thousand such choices and, thus, has been painful and therapeutic." This readiness to dig deep, to peel back his insecurities and reveal the less flattering parts of his personality, is what gives Nevertheless its moments of clarity and charm. Charm isn't perhaps the first word you'd associate with an actor who has mostly made headlines for his messy divorce (from Kim Basinger), a fracas with a paparazzo and a leaked answerphone message in which he yelled insults at his then 11-year-old daughter, Ireland. But, in between his adventures in film and theatre, and in recent years his comedy outings in shows such as 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live (he's currently best known for his Donald Trump impressions), his flaws are examined thoughtfully and with disarming candour. While some are treated with wryness or a resigned shrug, other more serious ones, such as his accidental drug overdose in his 20s, are offered up with a heartfelt desire to do better. His flaws are examined thoughtfully and with disarming candour Remembering his childhood and college years, Baldwin makes clear connections between his parents' behaviour and his own, and elegantly articulates how an early life on the breadline informed his outlook as he took his first steps towards independence. Raised in Massapequa, Long Island, he was the eldest of six children (his three brothers all followed him into acting) who were, along with their parents, crammed into a two-bedroom house. Watching his mother and father struggle throughout his teens, Baldwin began to plot his escape. For a short while he played at rebellion, hanging out with a group of older kids who would buy him beer and cigarettes, and with whom he would smoke pot. "I ended up sitting in calculus class, stoned, wondering if calculus could help me fly out of the window, away from calculus class," he observes drily. After school he began a law degree, but then switched colleges in order to train to become an actor. He got his first job on the NBC soap The Doctors, before embarking on a stint on Knots Landing. In between jobs he worked in theatre, which he still sees as his natural home, and then moved into film. Baldwin's movie career peaked in the early 90s, when he starred in The Hunt for Red October alongside Sean Connery, and then in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. More roles followed in The Marrying Man (known as Too Hot to Handle in the UK), Prelude to a Kiss, The Juror and The Edge, most of which bombed at the box office. The heftiest swipes are reserved for Harrison Ford, who replaced Baldwin in the lead role for the film Patriot Games In picking over his movie career, egotism and insecurity get equal billing, and Baldwin can't help comparing his status with that of his peers. While he gives respect where he thinks it's due -- he can't get enough of Jack Lemmon, Alec Guinness, Al Pacino and Anthony Hopkins -- he delights in taking down those he deems unpleasant or undeserving of success. Thus, he claims the Australian film-maker Phillip Noyce is a "marginal talent" and the director Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David, inherited her father's hair "but none of his talent". The heftiest swipes are reserved for Harrison Ford, who replaced Baldwin in the lead role for Patriot Games. When Baldwin met Ford he says he realised "the movies really do enhance certain actors, making them seem like something they really aren't. Ford, in person, is a little man, short, scrawny, and wiry, whose soft voice sounds as if it's coming from behind a door." These acerbic moments are amusing enough but they are at odds with his earlier reflectiveness. A shift in tone between Baldwin's pre- and post-fame existence is inevitable, though the difference here is marked, and the litany of slights, publicity cock-ups and professional hiccups tip him from self-aware to self-absorbed. There's a moment where, while discussing a series to be fronted by Baldwin, a producer on the cable and satellite network MSNBC puts her finger over her mouth in a shushing motion and says to him, "Stop complaining." Exactly, you think. - Fiona Sturges.