During the night of Thursday 21 to Friday 22 October lAmerican actor Alec Baldwin was involved in a fatal shooting on the set of a western in the state of New Mexico. Hollywood glory in the 90s, known for his marital troubles and his irascible character, Alec Baldwin saw his career revived by television with the success of the sitcom 30 Rock or his imitations of Donald Trump.
His caricature of the former President of the United States, mimicking his diction with lips pushed to the extreme and a bushy blonde wig, on Saturday Night Live, delighted audiences and won him the 2017 l ‘Emmy Award for Best Supporting Comedy Actor.
Receiving his prize, the charismatic actor had joked about the fact that after having had three children in three years, his wife had not had any the previous year thanks to the famous wig he was wearing: “it acts as contraception”. Some of his SNL sketches have been viewed on Youtube up to 20 million times. The icing on the cake, his performance had quite irritated his model: “It’s time to cut this boring, non-fun show. Alec Baldwin’s portrayal (of me) is rotten”, had tweeted Donald Trump at the end of 2016.
In the 2000s, the New York actor, now 63, had already received two Emmy Awards, equivalent to the Oscars for American television, for the sitcom 30 Rock where he played a studio boss opposite Tina Fey. With its seven seasons, the comedy had signed a real success for Baldwin and considerably improved his reputation as an actor.
Eldest and most famous of the four Baldwin brothers with acting careers – the others are Stephen, William and Daniel – Alec peaked during the 80s and 90s with notably Working Girl, Beetlejuice, Hunting for Red October.
In The singer and the billionaire and Guet-Apens he shared the poster with his ex-wife Kim Basinger. They formed one of the most glamorous couple of the time before an acrimonious divorce.
But the glory had passed and he was then confined to supporting roles, despite some performances noted as an incarnation of a husband of an Alzheimer’s patient in Still alice, or a fickle financial fraud perpetrator in Blue Jasmine.
The actor was also regularly on the boards of Broadway. Before resuming success for his imitations of Donald Trump, Alec Baldwin had mostly made the headlines for his outbursts in his private life and his outbursts.
In particular, he insulted a photographer, hurling homophobic remarks at him and briefly pursuing him, while he was trying to take stolen pictures of his wife Hilaria and their little girl. The actor was also grappling with a long legal battle with a Quebec actress, Geneviève Sabourin, sentenced to six months in prison for harassment against her in 2013.
In January 2019, following negotiations with the courts, he himself pleaded guilty to harassment after hitting a motorist who was disputing a parking space with him. Alec Baldwin was released after a Manhattan court hearing on condition that he follow a “brief training to manage anger”.
Thursday, November 21, he was the author of the fatal, and presumably accidental, shot that hit the cinematographer of the western he was filming in the US state of New Mexico. The movie director Rust was injured. The actor was questioned by investigators and left the filming location free.