At the ripe age of 42, his face still heroic, his leading-man career still cooking but his pride hurting from all the bad movies he has made, Alec Baldwin now works less and enjoys it more.
That's exactly like pleasures of the flesh, he told The Sun yesterday at the Toronto film festival.
"Acting to me is like sex," he said with a chuckle. "When I was young, I would do it with anybody. Now I'm older and it's just too intimate. I can't do it with just anybody, anymore." For the record, it's a cheeky metaphor. Baldwin is married to actress Kim Basinger.
Baldwin, who frequently works on location in Toronto, was back here for the festival's special screening of State And Main, the David Mamet satire about a bunch of sleazy Hollywood types taking over a Vermont village to make a movie. Baldwin plays movie star Bob, a weak, desperate but 'charming' man with a weakness for 14-year-old girls.
Baldwin, who also served as the film's co-executive producer with his partner Jon Cornick, took a small role in the large ensemble for the kick of doing something good, something he knew he would not have to apologize for later.
That is because making bad movies still hurts, Baldwin said. "I just work a lot less to avoid that pain. I'm not willing to take that chance as often as I used to."
Most scripts are guaranteed to be losers as finished movies, Baldwin said. "You read one of these scripts and say: 'If all of us go out every day and do our job at 110 %, at best the movie will be mediocre. And, if we all drop our level at some point, then we're all in various degrees of pain."
On a Mamet movie such as State And Main, there is no such problem. At a filmfest press conference following his Sun interview, Baldwin expanded on the theme.
"Everybody is here today because of Mamet," Baldwin said of himself, co-stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julia Stiles, Clark Gregg and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet's actress-wife), and the producers, all of them lined up at the conference table. "So I'm sorry he's not here, because he's shooting his next film."
As for the pleasure of delivering a Mamet line, Baldwin said of the experience: "There is more to play and there is more to plumb and there is more fun to be had in a Mamet screenplay than in any five or 10 other movies you are going to do.
"If you get your hands on this material, it's fun. It's work fun -- actors want a challenge."
Meanwhile, despite staying up to 5 a.m. partying with the State And Main people, Baldwin had his wits and his wit about him for the press conference. One hapless Toronto reporter, who accidentally addressed the question to "Bob Barrenger," his character's name in the movie, asked Baldwin how much he shares with the guy.
"Are you asking, 'Do I have an appetite for 14-year-old girls?' " Baldwin said, mocking the question. "I'm sorry, where are you going with this? ... (pause) ... Hmmm, I do have an appetite for half a 28-year-old."
That Mamet-penned line is lifted from the movie itself. Baldwin savours the laughs he gets from delivering it and then protests: "No, I'm not (like his character Bob). No! No! NO!"
It's a moment David Mamet himself might have scripted.
