- [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided by Panonica Foundation, Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Ascension Seton, BP America, Laura and John Beckworth, St.

David's HealthCare.

And by.

And also by.

A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

(bright music) - Welcome to the LBJ Presidential Library.

I'm Mark Updegrove.

Since the Library was dedicated by our 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, over a half a century ago, it has hosted some of the biggest names and best minds of our day to discuss our nation's rich history and the issues of our times.

Now we bring those conversations straight to you.

Alec Baldwin has been an acclaimed actor for over 40 year and he has a remarkably eclectic resume to prove it.

Among his many accomplishments is hosting NBC's "SNL" a record 17 times, earning an Emmy for his portrayal of President Donald Trump.

Tonight, I talked to Baldwin about his path to acting, his most defining experiences on stage and screen, and how he went about crafting his famous Donald Trump impersonation.

Alec Baldwin, welcome.

- Well, thank you.

Happy to be here.

- Delighted to have you.

I was interested to know when I was doing research, since we're in a presidential library, that you got a very interesting letter when you were in college at George Washington University.

- Washington, UW.

- From a former president.

- Right.

- Talk about that.

- Well, my friend Mark Weinberg, whose family were from Shaker Heights and Republican and the father was, worked for a management company, like real estate management company, Mark's father.

And there were two things I acquired through Mark.

One was I am a Kentucky Colonel.

I want you all to know that I'm a Kentucky Colonel.

The governor of Kentucky made us Kentucky Colonels, but the other thing was, when Nixon left the White House and there was that group of people who worked in Washington for Nixon that went on to finish with Ford, but then Ford lost in '76, there was that group, I believe, called the February Group, where they were all colleagues in the Nixon White House who stayed in touch and Mark was in touch with them.

They had him pouching by some special mail for the former president research from the Smithsonian, I believe it was, or some, the Library of Congress.

Mark was doing, he was working for Nixon and sending material.

Mark later worked in the Reagan White House.

He was in the White House with Reagan for a while in communications.

And Mark was sending stuff to San Clemente for the president, the former president.

So I run for president of my school my junior year, and I lose the runoff by two votes.

So we have a recount, which I though was crazy, and then we go to court.

We were gonna sue them for, they had electioneering, our opponents were electioneering in front of the, the guys that I worked with took it a bit more seriously than I did.

And you know, they were all super political.

They all wanted to go into politics in real life.

And so I lose, because if you had won the top two slots, no one had a majority or a plurality, you had to run in a runoff, those top two.

I was kept out by two votes.

And then I get this letter from Nixon.

And I get a letter that says, you know, I wish I could read it to you, but it said, you know, "The thing that matters most is that you entered the arena."

And I love how he wrote it.

He goes, "I understand the disappointing results."

Then he writes, "As far as you are concerned."

(Mark laughs) The disappointing results as far as you are concerned.

So yeah, I got that letter, it hangs in my office in my house on Long Island.

And you know, that was back in a time when that was all I thought about and all I cared about really.

I mean, I just wanted to go to law school and graduate and go into politics.

I don't think I really wanted to practice law necessarily, but who knows, because you're so young.

- Yeah.

- And then I ended up doing this.

- So you didn't become president, but you would play one on TV, and we'll get to that in a moment.

- Oh God.

Oh no.

- But you did go into acting.

Why?

- Well, I think, to be honest with you, in the beginning, I kind of saw that, I slowed everything down a little bit, and I kind of saw that law school was there if I wanted to go there.

It was on the horizon.

And if I took a year off to try this other thing, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

And then I went to drama school at NYU, I went to their very well regarded theater program there.

And I didn't graduate.

I graduated 14 years later with my class in 1994.

I was gonna be in the class of '80.

But I just thought to myself, my father said, "You'll never be young enough to do this again.

If you're gonna do it, try it now for a year."

And as soon as I did that job for a year, I worked constantly, I just kept working.

I got a job on a soap opera.

From there I went to LA, I got work.

I just kept working.

And my father was a school teacher with no money.

He had six kids and nothing.

So the chance to make money, I remember like walking out the door when I went to college maybe or beyond and I remember thinking, "Don't be like dad."

You know, like, I got to work and make some money.

I don't want to be that stressed out about it because, pardon me, my parents were stressed out about that a lot.

And I kept working and making money and it was a way to support my family.

My dad died when I was, he died in '83.

I was 25 years old.

I was just about to turn 20, I just turned 25.

And my dad was 55 when he died.

He had a very virulent form of cancer.

And I remember sitting there going, "Oh, I got to put a roof on my mom's house.

I got to put new snow tires on my brother Billy's car.

He's up in Binghamton."

You know, it was all like this desire to want to become the father, to really kind of become the father of my brothers and sisters.

Because I'm the oldest son (indistinct), so my sister and I were both like, we were the two vice presidents of the corporation there with my mother.

And it really was just about that, was just working, you know?

And you'd make money and you just, for me, it was just silly.

You know, it was just like ridiculous, you know?

But eventually, I'll never forget, I'm on the phone, I'm on a payphone with my agent.

And he goes, and I'm like, Gomer Pyle, I'm like the most naive person in the world.

(Mark laughs) I am.

Back then I was.

And I'm on the phone with my agent and I go, he goes, "How did it go?"

I go, "I think it went pretty well," this audition for this TV show.

He goes, "It went great!

They want to offer you 25 an episode and 12.5 for the pilot."

And I remember sitting there going, "My God, golly.

Y'all gonna pay me 2,500 for the pilot and $1,250 an episode?

Man, that's great."

And he was like, "No, you moron!

They're gonna pay you 25,000 for the pilot and 12,500 a week."

And I thought I was gonna faint.

Like the phone booth was spinning.

You know, and I though to myself, this is, the absurdity of that business, when you hit that vein, it's very remunerative, I'll say.

And I just kind of rode that.

It wasn't till a couple years later, or maybe soon thereafter I did the soap, that I realized that it's hard.

It was really, really worth my time.

It was challenging to act in a way that I though was, you know, good, or to act in a way that was, you got some respect from people for the work you did, not just about money.

I began to really face it.

You know, that Uta Hagen book, "Respect for Acting," is such a great primer for everybody because the, it's true, you know, in the beginning, I really didn't have very much respect for it.

It was like a weird hole I fell in, like Lewis Carroll, you know?

And then I'm, years would go by and I go, "This is, to do it well, is hard.

It's hard."

And I became focused on that.

- But you talked about tapping the vein.

You tapped that vein time after time after time after time.

You've been successful in a very fickle, very unpredictable industry for over four decades.

- Right.

- And if you look at your resume, it's shocking in its sheer breadth and eclecticism.

Why have you succeeded?

- My agent said to me, he goes, "You know, you wait long enough and they forget how much they hate you."

(Mark laughs) They forget how much they hate you.

You know, there were times I did jobs and there were opportunities to do things.

I wrote this in my memoir.

I wrote that, when I did "Prelude to a Kiss" off Broadway with Mary-Louise Parker and all that crowd, Craig Lucas was the writer.

Norman Rene was the director, great cast of people.

We did it off Broadway and Rich wrote us a love letter.

And the love letter from Rich was very powerful, because Rich was the, as they called him, the Butcher of Broadway, and he was, he didn't really like a lot of things.

And if you got a good review from Rich, it could change your life.

And we did "Prelude" and they were gonna go do it as a movie, and first they were gonna move to Broadway.

And they moved to Broadway.

Tim Hutton played the part that I was playing.

And I didn't go to Broadway because I wanted to go do a movie for the first time.

I was gonna get paid a lot of money.

I had already done "Red October."

And I was gonna get paid a million bucks for it.

I'm like, "How could you turn that down?"

From my background, you know, how do you turn that down?

And that was the first mistake I made in my career, was to not follow the instincts that had got me, I wrote this in my book.

I said that was the first seminal mistake I made, which was not to go to Broadway, follow my instincts, don't chase money, don't chase fame and so forth and stature in the business and so forth.

And I went and did the movie, which was, you know, I met my ex-wife on the movie.

And I go do "Streetcar."

And again, I get a beautiful review from Rich.

Not that you're review driven, but I got this beautiful review from Rich again.

And it changed my life.

For me, not in public.

I said to myself, "I have to go do this.

I want to go do this."

And once I did that, things began to really change for me, acting wise, a lot.

- That's a bold move.

You're stepping into the shoes, or the ripped T-shirt, more accurately, of Marlon Brando.

So was that daunting, playing Stanley?

- Well, in my book, I wrote the same thing, which is that Greg Mosher was the director.

And he comes up, and I never gave any thought whatsoever about Brando, never.

- Mm.

- I'm going, well, you know, whatever, we're here now and whatever.

And opening night, I'm sitting in my room and I'm like panicking.

It's opening night.

And Mosher comes in and goes, "How you doing?"

And I go, "I'm not doing very well."

I said, "What am I doing?

This is a complete waste of time.

This is ridiculous."

And Mosher looks at me and goes, "Marlon Brando is 300 pounds right now.

He's sitting in a mumu up on Mulholland Drive and he's not coming down here to do 'Streetcar Named Desire.'"

He said, "If people want to see 'Streetcar' on Broadway tonight, it's you.

So just snap out of it."

And he was right.

And then I met Brando years later, in 2000, right before, a couple years before he died, 2002.

We were gonna do a project together, a TV thing.

And he was very into doing these TV things because he was broke.

- Yeah.

- He needed money for his legal fees for his kids.

And I met with him and I said, you know, one thing led to another, and I said, "You know, I did 'Streetcar.'"

And he goes, he said, "Yeah, I heard you were very funny."

He said, "I heard you were very funny when you did the show.

Some of my friends came to see you."

And I said, "Yeah."

He goes, "Yeah, I wish I'd done that.

I wish I'd found some of the humor in the character because there's a lot that's funny in that part.

It's great humor there.

I wish I'd found more of it."

And I stood there and I went, "But you're happy the way it worked out nonetheless, right?

And how your 'Streetcar' was, you know, it went okay, right?"

And he was like (mimics laughter).

But again, I mean, all the anecdotes aside and like to get right into something, which is that, it's like, that changed me, man.

- Mm.

- It really helped me.

Because to go out there every night and to not, some nights not want to do that, Like some nights after like four or five weeks of the run, you're sitting there going, "Blanche, why don't we sit down and have a beer and talk this out?

Let's become friends."

Like, "I don't want to scream at you at all."

I mean, it's two and a half hours, you know?

We did the first run through.

It was three hours and 10 minutes.

And we had to take out all the pauses and get it going, you know, keep it moving.

- You talked about the comedy that you found in "Streetcar," but you found comedy in "30 Rock" and on "SNL."

Is doing comedy different than doing dramatic roles?

- Well, it's different because of the, you know, a script can come to you.

And very often for me, it's been, "Do I want to go to work?"

Like if I haven't worked for a couple months and I'm sitting there going, and everything out there's like four films I might make and they're all so-so.

None of them's really great.

Like if we all came to work, I always say this, if we all came to work and we were perfect every day, we'd still only have mediocrity, you know what I mean, in the movie.

The movie's just so-so.

But you want to go to work.

- Yeah.

- Not just necessarily for money, you want to get out the door and go do something.

So you pick a project and you go do it.

And in dramatic acting, you can kind of do all kinds of, I don't want to say weird, but like specific things you can do to kind of pull focus to yourself and play the part a certain way, and attract more attention that's not necessarily there on the page.

So you can get away with more, I think.

But in comedy, if it's not funny, it's not funny.

It's very binary.

If the writing isn't funny, it isn't funny.

And what you have now is an ocean on the streaming services and cable.

You have an ocean of movies that are more cute than funny.

They're not funny.

They're not clever, they're cute.

The guy smashes his father-in-law with a golf club in the head or whatever, like those crazy "Three Stooges" stuff.

And it's not that clever.

So when I got to go do "30 Rock" with Tina, I've done "SNL," and that was its own thing.

And I just kept going back because it was just nothing like it.

I couldn't find anything to do that was like that.

And I really, I never planned to do it 17 times, which is kind of ludicrous.

- You're alluding to the fact that you've hosted "SNL" 17 times, which is a record.

Nobody's hosted "SNL" more than you.

- Well, I don't know if that's a good thing, but I seem to have a lot of time on my hands from here and there.

But then we get to Tina and "30 Rock" and I mean, what a gift for me.

A real gift, because I think the show was really her show and it was gonna be her show about her character.

And they said to me, "Would you come and play this part?"

And I said, "Ah, you know, I don't want to do a TV series."

And I was commuting to LA to see my older daughter after I got divorced from her mother.

And Lorne said, "Well," I said, "I'll do six recurring."

And then the network came back and said, "If he doesn't do all episodes produced, we're not gonna pick up the show."

And I was like, "Oh, that's not cool."

And then finally Lorne said to me, he goes, "I'll have you out, you don't work Monday and Friday every other week.

You can go home and see your kids.

Go back."

Not home, I live in New York, but go to LA.

- Right.

- So I worked Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday every other week.

I had a four day weekend to go fly out there, which I did every weekend forever.

And I said, "Okay."

I mean, Lorne's a friend, I love Lorne, and he's been good to me and this was how he was good to me, he talked me into this thing, which was great.

And very good for me personally, I must say.

And I, you know, we get to season.

Season one's okay.

Everybody's feeling their way around.

Like you watch season one of "Will and Grace," and none of them are doing what they wound up doing by season three, none of them.

- You find your way.

- Same with us.

Well, you're a little timid and then you start to play and play- - Right.

- And then that's working and that's working.

They tell you yes or no, what's working.

You know, by the time season three came, we won every award twice.

Season four, we won every, we won every award, season three and four, I think it was.

And "30 Rock" was never a ratings boom, but we creeped by with enough ratings to stay on the air.

Anything they put in our place would have probably bombed, statistically speaking, so we do that show and it was just so amazing for me.

It was really, really great.

I mean, I don't mean just in like my career and helping me.

I get a call, they want me to do "It's Complicated" with Meryl, which I think, oh God, I mean, that was like the most thrilling thing of my life, or one of them.

But all these things, it's who you work with.

I'm sitting there on the set of "It's Complicated."

There's John Toll, the cinematographer, one of the two people to win back to back Oscars.

He won for "Legends of the Fall," I think, and then "Braveheart," back to back years.

One of the great masters of cinematography.

You're always on sets, especially with DPs, you're always on sets with people who, my God, the work they've done in their lives is just exhilarating.

- Lorne Michaels talked you into "30 Rock," but he's also talked you into other things too.

- Yeah, enough with Lorne.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm sick of him now.

- Well, but he talked you into Donald Trump, the most inimitable imitation of Donald Trump that you did for the first term in office.

How did that come about?

- Well, if you're gonna do a really, really precise imitation of Trump, that's a movie.

You know, you and I have spoken before about how Brendan Gleeson, they did that Comey, Trump Comey movie.

A good movie, but them giving much more precise, you know, you can't do this and do like this really brassy, crazy nonsense for an hour and a half or two hours, you know?

It's a much more precise and laid back and real.

Contrast that with the idea of a five minute cold opening, you've got to do something brassy.

You've got to grab the audience by the lapels and you got to get them.

We're gonna do a live TV show right now.

Let's go.

We're gonna fire the cannon here, you know?

And so the cold opening of "SNL" always has to be big.

At least I think so.

So when they asked me to do it, I thought, "Oh God, I don't want to..." So like I've mentioned to other people, I watched the character with the sound off.

So we put Trump on TV, we turned the sound off.

And you see.

The gestures, the face, the so forth.

And you just watch him and watch him and watch him and go, "Okay," because you want to get the voice last.

Because if you do him precisely, like I said, in the rhythms and everything, I mean, this is a guy that gives speeches for an hour and a half.

So we need to, how do we distill Trump down to, in my mind, no one told me this, in my mind, his most vulgar essence.

Someone said they were characterizing and a reporter was characterizing in an article, the different people who played Trump, and said this one was, you know, this kind of Trump and this one.

And they said, "Alec Baldwin, who was Monster Trump."

I thought that was so funny.

Trump as a monster.

I thought, "That's right.

That's exactly what I was aiming for."

- You co-hosted a show called "The Essentials."

- Right.

- What do you consider to be the essential American movies?

- Oh, well, I mean, there's what other people think and you agree with them.

You grow up indoctrinated into thinking that "Shane" is a great Western, and it is.

It's a great movie, even though technically it's kind of a mess.

Like they shoot guy's one angle and it's dark out.

Then they shoot the other guy's, the other angle, and the sun is out.

And there's some funny inconsistencies in the lighting, if you will, of "Shane."

But I grew up watching old movies and the only way you could watch them was on the syndicated stations in New York.

WOR, Channel 9, PIX, Channel 11, NEW, Channel 5.

They'd have that famous show on called, "Million Dollar Movie."

- Mm.

- And this back when computers were more naive than now and they had what was called a booth announcer in the studio.

So if something technically went wrong, a guy would come on or a woman would come on and go, and there's one guy whose name was like Robert Molly.

I always remember, forget his first name.

And Robert Molly was a guy who'd come on and go, "We're experiencing technical difficulties.

We'll be back in a moment with 'Million Dollar Movie.'"

He had a very mellifluous voice.

And I go, I mean, I would watch all these movies.

I mean, I watched, because it was the only way.

- Mm.

Right.

- When I was a kid and I was like six or seven years old, eight years old, the rebroadcast of a Hollywood movie on TV years later was a big deal.

- Mm.

- So literally like on NBC, they go, you know, "Sunday night movie.

Our television premiere, 'The Sound of Music.'"

And you sit there and go, "Oh my God, 'The Sound of Music.'

We're gonna watch 'The Sound of Music' on Sunday."

No VHS.

- Right.

- No discs, nothing.

No cable, no streaming, nothing.

- You watched it or you didn't.

- You watched it.

That was your chance to see that movie.

So you watch that movie with what I call Ayurvedic listening.

You're zoned in, you're listening to every line, you're so focused.

You're so focused on the TV and nothing's gonna get in between you and the TV and paying attention.

So I started to remember the lines of films, you know, when I was a kid.

And I just watched scores and scores, maybe hundreds of movies that way, horror movies on the weekend.

And I have a list of, you know, I'll give you a list of- - Yeah, please.

- 250 movies that you have to watch before you die.

But when you think about movies that are, I'll pick three that I think are unique and why.

So I've always said the same thing about "The Godfather."

"The Godfather" is a masterpiece because it's like a painting that goes, starts moving.

The color, the texture, the costumes, the sets, the lighting, everything is of one.

Stylistically, "The Godfather" is like a painting, like a masterpiece painting that starts to move and everybody starts moving.

And just the look of "The Godfather," the tones and the kind of, the beauty of it, in terms of cinema is incomparable.

Gordon Willis, who I worked with.

- Cinematographer.

- The great Gordon Willis.

Yeah.

Number two, I would say is "Citizen Kane," obviously, because, and what's a shame about Wells is that he was so successful so early, like Brando.

And it made him very cynical and it made him very, I don't want to say narcissistical, although that might be the word, it might be, where they, you know, Wells had such an, you know, huge success at his age.

And it is this movie you can never stop watching.

Brando's the same way.

Brando, when he was young, when he had the sheen of his youth and took like the Rubik's cube of method acting, it was literally like zip, zip, zip, zip, "You mean like that?"

And everybody in Hollywood was like, "Yeah, just like that."

And he figured out complex acting when he was young and still beautiful and sexy.

- "Streetcar," "On the Waterfront."

- Yeah, all that stuff.

Yeah.

"The Men" and everything.

- Right.

- And then the third one I would probably say is not an American film because there's so many people I leave out, like Scorsese and so forth.

But I would say, you know, obviously "Lawrence of Arabia" in terms of what you could do if you were willing to torture the crew.

If you were this maniacal director who was willing to kill everybody in the pursuit of shooting this film.

You know, that's a movie I can never stop watching.

But I mean, I have hundreds of movies that I think are really, really worthwhile.

- Oh, would you put any of your movies in there?

- No!

No, no, no, no, no.

Never, never.

I don't have any feelings about the films I've ever made.

Never.

Never.

- Why?

- I just, it's a thing I did and somebody else made the movie.

I made my contribution.

I did the best I could.

I mean, sometimes I think critics are very unfair, where they blame the actors for the success or failure of the movie creatively.

I mean, forget about box office, because the two tend to follow each other maybe, but I find that, I just, you do the movie, and you, David Mamet said to me once, he wrote "The Edge," the movie I did with Tony Hopkins, which was the best experience I've ever had making a movie because it was with Tony.

I mean, I worshiped Tony.

- Mm.

- I was on vacation with my wife and De Niro was supposed to do the film and he dropped out.

And they got Tony to do the movie and I cried.

They called me, they go, "Tony Hopkins is playing," I started to cry.

But I think that, you know, critics blame the actors because they can.

Because if you start blaming the directors and the producers and the studio for making (censored) movies, you're not gonna get invited to the screenings anymore.

The actors are always the most vulnerable, always, 1000% the most vulnerable in terms of getting blame assigned to them for the success or failure of a movie when they have the least, I mean, if you're a huge movie star, like Cruise, and the movie is yours to produce and make, that's very different.

And he knows a lot of things about making movies.

But for me, I just, all of my deepest memories, my fondest memories are in the theater.

With the exception of working with Meryl, which was great, and working with Tony, because those two things stood alone is very, very, just a remarkable opportunity for me.

- By virtue of the company you were keeping.

- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Alec, I hope you keep on doing what you do.

Thanks so much for being with us.

- Yeah, thank you.

Thanks for having me.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided by Panonica Foundation, Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Ascension Seton, BP America, Laura and John Beckworth, St.

David's HealthCare.

And by.

And also by.

A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

(soft bright music) (bright upbeat music)