A Key Piece of Evidence Ended Alec Baldwin’s Involuntary Manslaughter Trial for Good
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1958-present
Alec Baldwin News: Actor’s Trial for Involuntary Manslaughter Permanently Dismissed
After years of legal back and forth following a deadly 2021 shooting on the set of his movie Rust, Alec Baldwin escaped criminal liability for good. On July 12, four days into the actor’s trial for involuntary manslaughter, a New Mexico judge found prosecutors and authorities unfairly withheld evidence and dismissed the case. Baldwin cried upon hearing the ruling in the courtroom then hugged his lawyers and his wife, Hilaria.
The 66-year-old actor, who stars in and is a producer of the yet-to-be-released film, was preparing for a scene on October 21, 2021, when a prop gun fired and killed Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42. Baldwin maintained that he didn’t pull the trigger and pleaded not guilty.
During the trial, Baldwin’s legal team discovered a man had brought live ammo to the Sante Fe County Sheriff’s Office earlier this year and said it could be related to the case. “The late discovery of this evidence has impacted the fundamental fairness of the proceedings,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said. “There is no way for the court to right this wrong. The sanction of dismissal is the only warranted remedy.”
The trial commenced July 9 after a New Mexico grand jury indicted Baldwin on one charge of involuntary manslaughter in January. Baldwin faced a similar charge in the case in January 2023; it was later dropped after his defense team raised questions about whether the gun was functioning properly when it fired.
Who Is Alec Baldwin?
Alec Baldwin is an Emmy-winning actor known for his role as TV executive Jack Donaghy on the sitcom 30 Rock as well as roles in the movies Beetlejuice, Glengarry Glen Ross, and The Hunt for Red October. His acting career started in 1980 when he was cast in the daytime soap opera The Doctors before he embarked on an award-winning theater career and made his movie debut with 1987’s Forever Lulu. His performance in The Cooler earned him a 2003 Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Baldwin holds the record for most times hosting Saturday Night Live. In October 2021, the actor was involved in a fatal on-set shooting for the yet-to-be-released Western film Rust.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Alexander Rae Baldwin III
BORN: April 3, 1958
BIRTHPLACE: Amityville, New York
SIBLINGS: Stephen, William, Daniel, Elizabeth, Jane
SPOUSES: Kim Basinger (1993-2002) and Hilaria Baldwin (2012-present)
CHILDREN: Ireland, Carmen, Rafael, Leonardo, Romeo, Eduardo, Lucia, and Ilaria
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries
Early Life and Famous Brothers
Alec Baldwin was born Alexander Rae Baldwin III on April 3, 1958, in Amityville, New York. The second of six children, he grew up in Massapequa, a suburb of Long Island, New York. His brothers—Daniel, William, and Stephen—also became actors. Additionally, Alec has an older sister, Elizabeth, and a younger sister, Jane.
Alec majored in political science at George Washington University, intending to go to law school. However, his childhood love for acting resurfaced in college, resulting in a move to Manhattan to enroll in New York University’s drama department, where he studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute.
One of Baldwin’s early jobs was working as a bus boy at the legendary nightclub Studio 54 in New York City.
Movies and TV Shows
The Doctors and Knots Landing
Baldwin began his acting career on television when he landed a role playing Billy Aldrich on the NBC soap opera The Doctors (1980-1982). He soon moved to primetime TV as a co-star in the series Cutter to Houston and as Joshua Rush in the nighttime soap opera Knots Landing (1984-85). In 1988, he replaced George Carlin as the narrator of the popular animated children’s show Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends.
Beetlejuice, The Hunt for Red October, and Glengarry Glen Ross
Baldwin made his movie debut in the quirky Forever Lulu (1987) with Deborah Harry and Ruth Westheimer, better known as Dr. Ruth. His subsequent film highlights include Tim Burton’s offbeat comedy Beetlejuice (1988), Married to the Mob (1988) with Michelle Pfeiffer, Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio (1988), Working Girl (1988), playing Jimmy Swaggart in Great Balls of Fire (1989), and starring in Miami Blues (1990) and The Hunt For Red October (1990). Baldwin was also part of the all-star ensemble cast in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and starred in the film adaptation of Prelude to a Kiss (1992) and The Shadow (1994).
The Cooler, The Aviator, and The Departed
Continuing his movie work, Baldwin appeared in the 1998 thriller Mercury Rising and the 1999 comedy Outside Providence, before making an unbilled cameo in 1999’s Notting Hill, with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.
Baldwin was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2003 for his role in the romantic drama The Cooler. In 2004, he appeared in The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s biopic of Howard Hughes that starred Leonardo DiCaprio, and the quirky Along Came Polly with Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. He worked with Scorsese again on The Departed in 2005.
30 Rock
In 2006, Baldwin landed a lead role as TV executive Jack Donaghy in the popular television sitcom 30 Rock, starring Tina Fey. He received numerous awards for his performance on the show, including three Golden Globes, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Emmy Awards. Baldwin also worked behind the cameras as a producer on 30 Rock.
Mission Impossible, Boss Baby, and The Public
Back on the big screen, Baldwin appeared in the romantic comedy It’s Complicated with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin in 2009 and Rock of Ages with Tom Cruise and Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2012. He then co-starred in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation in 2015, before reprising his role three years later for Mission: Impossible – Fallout.
With his distinctive, deep voice, Baldwin has provided voice work for documentaries and animated movies, including Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008) and Rise of the Guardians (2012). He also voiced the titular infant businessman of the animated Boss Baby (2017) and its 2021 sequel The Boss Baby: Family Business, as well as a polar bear in Arctic Dogs (2019).
Around that time, the actor enjoyed a prominent role in the ensemble drama The Public, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018, before appearing in the crime film Motherless Brooklyn and the comedies Before You Know It and Drunk Parents in 2019.
More recently, Baldwin has appeared in the disaster film Supercell and the thriller 97 Minutes, both from 2023.
Talk Show Host and Saturday Night Live
Baldwin tried his hand at being a talk show host in the fall of 2013, but it proved to be a short-lived venture. Up Late with Alec Baldwin aired only a few times before its host landed in hot water. The show was suspended after Baldwin made homophobic remarks to a New York photographer, and he soon parted ways with MSNBC. He later returned to hosting in 2018 with The Alec Baldwin Show. The show lasted only eight episodes and went off the air for good by December of that year.
A fan of classical music, Baldwin serves as host of the New York Philharmonic’s radio show. He also has hosted Saturday Night Live a record 17 times and performed a popular impersonation of President Donald Trump on the show, for which he earned another Emmy in 2017.
Theater Career
Early on, Baldwin also pursued a theater career. He made his Broadway debut in Joe Orton’s black comedy Loot (1986), which won him a Theatre World Award. His next stage role was in Caryl Churchill’s hit comedy Serious Money (1987). He also starred off-Broadway in a sold-out engagement of Prelude to a Kiss, receiving an Obie Award as Best Actor in 1991. He reprised this role on screen in 1992.
Baldwin then appeared as Stanley Kowalski in a revival of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1992), earning a Tony nomination for Best Actor. He later appeared in the 1995 version of the play on CBS, which co-starred Jessica Lange, John Goodman, and Diane Lane. In 1998, Baldwin went back to the stage, appearing in Shakespeare’s Hamlet with co-star Angela Bassett, at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York City.
Wife Hilaria Baldwin and Children
Baldwin began a relationship with yoga instructor Hilaria Thomas in August 2011. The couple got engaged the following April and were married on July 1, 2012, at New York City’s St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. Their guests included Jimmy Fallon, Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey, and Woody Allen.
The couple had their first child together, a daughter named Carmen, in August 2013. They have since had four sons: Rafael, born June 2015; Leonardo, born in September 2016; Romeo, born in May 2018; and Eduardo, born in September 2020. In February 2021, Hilaria posted on her Instagram that they welcomed a daughter, Lucia. A little over a year later in September 2022, the couple had their seventh child, a daughter named Ilaria.
In June 2024, Alec and Hilaria announced their family will be featured on a new TLC reality series, beginning in 2025. “We’re inviting you into our home to experience the ups and downs, the good, the bad, the wild and the crazy,” Alec said in the Instagram announcement. “Home is the place we love to be most.” The working title for the show is The Baldwins.
Ex-Wife Kim Basinger
Prior to his current marriage, Baldwin wed actor Kim Basinger in 1993, and the couple had one daughter, Ireland, in 1995. In January 2001, after seven years of marriage, Basinger filed for divorce. Their split was finalized in 2002 after a vicious custody battle over the couple’s daughter and allegations of abuse and alcoholism.
In their divorce trial, Baldwin was awarded joint legal custody of his daughter. In May 2007, however, the courts briefly revoked his visitation rights when his then-11-year-old daughter publicized an expletive-strewn phone message he left her in April of that year.
Books and Getting Sober
In 2008, Baldwin published the book A Promise to Ourselves, which documented his battle to retain custody of and visitation with his daughter. In the book, he revealed that he had spent millions in travel, bought a home close to Basinger, and taken a break in his career in order to be near his daughter. He said that, as a result, his frustration leaked into a court-appointed phone call to his daughter, which she didn’t answer. In 2009, he told Playboy magazine that he had contemplated suicide over the voicemail incident.
In 2017, prior to the release of his memoir Nevertheless, Baldwin gave an interview to Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos, in which he discussed his struggles with alcoholism, a drug overdose which he kept private for many years, and getting sober in 1985. “I got sober when I was just about to turn 27,” Baldwin said in the interview. “And those two years that I lived in that white, hot period, as a daily drug abuser, as a daily drinker... to my misery, boy, that was a tough time.”
Baldwin is an outspoken activist for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and has been a contributor to community theater organizations, including the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New York, and the now-defunct Circle Repertory Theatre in New York City. Baldwin is also on the board of directors of The Creative Coalition, People for the American Way, New York City Center, and The Drama League of New York.
Rust Shooting and Manslaughter Trial
More recently, Baldwin has been in headlines because of a deadly shooting that happened on the set of his movie Rust in October 2021. Baldwin, who stars in and is a producer of the Western, was practicing a cross-draw technique for a scene during filming on October 21, 2021, near Santa Fe, New Mexico, when the prop gun he was using accidentally fired and struck 42-year-old cinematographer Halyna Hutchins as well as director Joel Souza. Hutchins died from her injuries.
The actor and the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, were each charged with involuntary manslaughter in January 2023. Baldwin’s charges were dropped three months later when special investigators said there were “new facts” that needed further investigation. But in January 2024, a New Mexico grand jury voted to again charge Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter. Baldwin maintained he didn’t pull the trigger and pleaded not guilty. (Gutierrez-Reed was convicted in March 2024 and later sentenced to 18 months in prison.)
Four days into his trial, in July 2024, Baldwin’s legal team successfully argued for the case to be dismissed due to withheld evidence. That evidence was live ammo that a family friend of Gutierrez-Reed brought to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office in March and said it could be related to the shooting. Because authorities didn’t log the ammo in the case, Baldwin’s defense attorneys didn’t know about it until the trial had already begun. In her dismissal, the judge ruled Baldwin can’t be retried.
Baldwin previously settled a civil lawsuit with Hutchins’ widower and son that partially resulted in the widower becoming an executive producer on Rust, which has since been completed and is awaiting distribution. The star continues to face other civil suits, including one brought by Hutchins’ parents and sister.
Alec Baldwin Net Worth
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Baldwin’s total value is estimated to be around $70 million as of June 2024.
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