Brandon Voss gets
the goods from Baldwin on the men he's loved, advances
from Matt Drudge and his brother's attacks on gay
marriage.
The eldest and most successful Baldwin brother,
highly respected for his New York stage work and
prolific film career (I’m still partial to
Working Girl and Beetlejuice), Alec garnered a
Golden Globe for his role as Republican network exec
Jack Donaghy on NBC’s 30 Rock, which as of
press time was on hiatus due to the writers
strike. With no time to touch on his Emmy-nominated
guest arc on Will & Grace or the many gay
characters he’s played as host of Saturday
Night Live (“Canteen Boy, have you ever had a
mimosa?”), the 49-year-old Oscar nominee
and I dredged up his own controversial “Drudge
report,” mourned the loss of Halston, and
looked back at the men he’s
loved.
When I interviewed your brother William for The
Advocate on his Dirty Sexy Money role, I asked him
who’d get the hottest guys if the Baldwin
brothers were gay. He replied, “Me, because
I’ve always gotten the hottest
chicks.” How do you respond?
Well, you know,
Billy’s been in L.A. and out in the sun too long, so
we have to allow that he’s lost touch with
reality. Billy certainly has his following now from
his show, but I’ve had my gay following for a long
time. Billy didn’t have a book written about him.
Have you actually read [Michael Thomas Ford’s
1998 essay collection] Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me and
Other Trials From My Gay Life?
Someone told me
about it, and I thought it was really funny. And the guy
who wrote the book sent me a copy, but no, I never read it.
How might your Catholic family in Massapequa, Long
Island, have reacted if a Baldwin brother actually had
come out?
I really
don’t know, because I remember when I grew up -- and
this is on a serious, sad note here -- there was only
one guy in my town that I knew of who was gay, and no
one even really knew what that was. I don’t even
remember that even being discussed when I was a kid. Then we
found out this kid who had killed himself was gay, and
he was my friend in high school. He was a lovely guy.
That, for me, was the beginning of understanding what
life was like for people who lived a gay life, but it
really became clear when I got into show business. I did a
soap [The Doctors, 1980–82], and David
O’Brien, who played my father, was gay. David
was my dear, dear, dear friend, and I was going with him and
his friends to Ambrosia and Rounds and the Mayfair
over on First Avenue—I lived at 58th and First,
so this was like upscale-gay central. I mean, this was
no Boots and Saddle, the Anvil, Crisco Disco, or any of that
militant, leather gay. These guys were bankers, insurance
executives—this was rich gay. Men who were gay
like ’50s gay -- they kept it quiet, they went
to private clubs, and when they went out in the street they
didn’t want anybody to know their private lives
at all. I was hanging out with these guys, having
dinner with them a couple of nights a week, and it was
just the most amazing experience I’d ever had in my
life.
Were they respectful of your being straight?
Oh, yeah, they
loved it. These guys either had long-term partners, or it
was about hustlers for them.
Who’s your closest gay friend now?
Probably Scott
Ellis, [the associate artistic director] of the Roundabout
that I did [Entertaining Mr.] Sloane with, and his
boyfriend, Jeff Mahshie, who’s a clothing
designer. But I have so many friends that are gay. If
you’re in this business, it seems like half of them
are -- maybe more.
A few years ago you were set to star in the
long-delayed biopic Simply Halston as fashion designer
Roy Halston, which would have been your first gay
film role.
They decided to
do that with somebody else, and it ultimately made sense,
because it’s impossible to take an older actor and
make him look younger with makeup and so forth. When
you have an age range in a character, most directors
know the secret is to take someone young so that you can age
them. It disappointed me because I was completely in love
with the script. I was dying to do it. It was a great
challenge for me.
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