Baldwin, 45 and the eldest of four brothers who are all actors,
has been a professional screen presence since 1980, when he joined
the cast of the NBC soap opera “The Doctors.” “Look
in your rearview mirror,” he says, sipping a cappuccino in
the nearly empty restaurant. “I’ve been doing this for
20 years.” And this, above all, is what he’s learned about
how to do what he does: “All research is the same. You just
want to walk onto the set with a belt you wear of authenticity.
When I played a surgeon in a film (opposite Nicole Kidman in 1993’s
“Malice”), I watched 100 hours of trauma surgery. I saw
what it was like. Teenage girls with steering wheels shoved through
them. I watched horrible things. I watched really brutal things.
And I watched the way doctors behaved with a kind of imperiousness
and the kind of field marshal quality they had when they were saving
people’s lives, and the arrogance and so forth. I played this
egomaniacal character. And when the guy utters the line, ‘I
am God,’ some of the folks I met, I could see them uttering
that line. Not all of them. But some of them. I want to know the
timbre of the people in the room.”
Baldwin’s own timbre might surprise those who only know him
as tabloid fodder. He’s back for a second year to participate
in the Hamptons festival, which has unspooled almost literally in
his backyard for the past 11 years.
Taking part in a spotlight question and answer session last year
with a New York City film critic, Baldwin turned the tables. This
time, the actor asked the questions, using the forum to examine
the art of movie criticism. He wasn’t looking for payback for
bad reviews, either: “Actually, he’s been very kind to
me.”
Although he commutes constantly between coasts, Baldwin has always
called Long Island home, and, in fact, will be back East for a spell
in January in a Roundabout Theatre Company revival of the Ben Hecht-Charles
MacArthur play “Twentieth Century” at the American Airlines
Theatre. “I live there. Nobody bothers me. People from out
of town, getting off the bus here in New York get really perky when
they see me, though. Folks from Midland, Texas, they get very excited.”
Not long after Baldwin says this, the few diners left in the restaurant
prepare to exit after their late-late lunch. An elderly gent shouts
a greeting from across the room. Baldwin graciously waves and says
thanks.
And now he’s got to know. “Where are you from?” he
asks. Turns out, the man lives down the block. The actor turns back
around in his chair “He’s not from Midland, Texas! Somebody’s
excited who actually lives in New York,” he says, bemused,
and animating his voice for effect. “That’s a good sign.”
