Though he would have chosen a “less pitted career path,” the resilient actor Alec Baldwin keeps emerging on the thrilling end of what he calls “an alternately thrilling and challenging” time in his chosen field. The once sought-after leading man (Jack Ryan, after all) made a mini John-Travolta-in-Pulp-Fiction-type comeback as the indelible Jack Donaghy in Tina Fey’s 30 Rock.
Riding high these days, Baldwin has just signed on to play the billionaire Mayor of New York City in an as-yet-unnamed HBO series. But TV is just a way to pay the bills. Baldwin really wants to do theater. His last effort on Broadway–“Orphans” in 2013–didn’t do well enough to hang on, despite a Tony nomination. But even when Baldwin first found himself in LA he pined for the boards and came back East to trod them. Back in those halcyon days he even did some Tennessee Williams. “The night Streetcar closed, I wept, knowing I would likely never say Williams’ great words on stage again,” Baldwin writes on his website. “All of my fondest memories, without question, have been in the theatre.”
