Hip and beloved

Alec Baldwin has racked up eight Golden Globe nominations and has won three — both for his scathingly funny portrayal of GE executive Jack Donaghy in the comedy 30 Rock.

Baldwin, 51, is at an age when many actors in his cohort are wandering a wilderness between The Hangover and The Bucket List. They're not young enough to be hip, not old enough to be a beloved old geezer; Baldwin has managed to be both hip and beloved.

Over the past few years he has survived all manner of thorns (from The Cat in the Hat to That Phone Call) and emerged not just unscathed, but coming up roses. His latest movie, It's Complicated, is a hit (thanks in no small measure to his own fearless display of male middle-aged flesh); he's due to co-host the Oscars show in March; and with the midterm elections heating up, he's even giving serious thought to a political run (and wait till you hear his line about hooker scandals).

If Baldwin does run, he'd be returning to his roots as a political science major at George Washington University, which he attended for two years before transferring to NYU in 1979.

"They were burning the Shah [of Iran] in effigy in Lafayette Park," he recalls of those days in Washington. "If you did that now in Lafayette Park, you might get shot.

"GW itself was much more quaint than it is now. It was a commuter school that had very little endowment. People went there for two years because they didn't get into the Ivy League school that was their first choice. Then you'd transfer to the school you really wanted to go to. It had very worthy programmes, but it was just a shadow of what it was going to become, and now it's a very powerful school."

His college-days friends are all still in Washington, he says: "They're K Street lawyers, and they live in Herndon and Reston and have kids. If I had stayed, I might be living in Herndon or Reston or Old Town." (All three are in Virginia.)

Of course, there's still time: A Democratic senator to his north, Christopher Dodd, won't be running.

"Well, I think the Connecticut attorney general [Richard Blumenthal] is going to be senator, and I'm hoping that Ned Lamont is going to get rid of my boyfriend... what's his name?" (That would be Joe Lieberman.)

"I'm a New Yorker and I live here, so if I run for office, I prefer to do that here," Baldwin continues. "And in New York, it's more complicated here than a lot of other places. There are lots of entitlements here, a lot of people who just presume the job belongs to them because they've been in line...

"So, I really don't know. I'm thinking about it. I may be one hooker scandal away from running for Senate in New York!"

Flawless delivery

Timing has been everything in a career that began with Baldwin being hailed as a commanding dramatic actor with smouldering bedroom eyes, and has steadily grown into a case study in endurance, flexibility and the importance of flawless comic delivery (preferably in a leonine purr). From occasional comedic forays in legendary guest shots on Saturday Night Live, Baldwin has become one of the most reliably funny actors on the screen, big, small or iSized. And this particular second act started with a show Baldwin initially didn't want to do.

"I never wanted to do a TV show. Never, never, never," he says of 30 Rock, now in its fourth season. "Literally, the guy who's going to be the head writer in Season 5 was just graduating from Harvard when we started the show. The X-factor of the writers, the scripts, who's going to show up and put the words in your mouth — it's a big chance."

Once Baldwin did the 30 Rock pilot and a few episodes, he says, he realised this is fun.

"The reality of filmmaking is, you think things to death," he says. "You're doing a movie and someone says, ‘Should you say the line and THEN sip the tea? Or sip the tea and THEN say the line? Or should you do part of the line and then sip the tea and then finish the line?'

"Whereas with TV, and Tina [Fey] and I have talked about this many times, you don't have time for that. You develop these muscles to make quicker choices. But at the same time, what I learned at NYU is still true, 30 years later: You relax, you do your Stanislavski relaxing exercises and you remember there's no place else you'd rather be. If you convey to the audience that you don't want to be there, they'll pick up on that, and..."

Baldwin interrupts himself in a moment worthy of Donaghy himself. "I have to get into an elevator, can you hang on? [Walk with me, Lemon!] I tell you what, let me get into the elevator and I'll call you back."

Safely at his destination, Baldwin continues, sharing the secret to playing comedy. "It's the same for me as for every [actor]. The more real you can play it, the better. You just try to play the scene. If the scene is funny, play the scene. Don't try to MAKE it funny."

Those principles clearly served Baldwin well in the most uproarious scene in It's Complicated, when he's shown in the generously girthed altogether on Meryl Streep's bed, with only a strategically placed laptop for a fig leaf. How exactly did that sequence come about?

"That certainly wasn't MY idea!" he cries. "You know, the script always reads one way when you're tucked in your bed reading it with the Manhattan skyline glittering in the distance, you have a nice beverage, everything's nice and cozy," Baldwin says. "You read it and you laugh, and you forget the rule, which is [always to ask yourself], ‘What would it be like to watch this film?' Then the second question you ask is, ‘What would it be like to SHOOT this film?'

"I've found that if I think to myself, ‘To shoot this film would be problematic,' I probably won't do it. And I have read scripts where I say, ‘I'd rather SEE this movie than MAKE this movie.'

"But the fact that Meryl was the other lead, I couldn't say no. So I read the script and I didn't really think about it in terms of the humiliation factor [until] they were shaving the hair off my body and spray-tanning me for that scene."

Now, rushing to his next destination, Baldwin signs off — disappearing, one can only hope, into the glittering Manhattan night.