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It was the private voicemail message not meant to be shared and yet ended up being heard by nearly everyone – Alec Baldwin’s angry April 2007 tirade against his daughter, Ireland, accusing the then-11-year-old of being a “rude little pig” who needed to have her “ass straightened out” after she had “humiliated me for the last time.”
Only now, as the Emmy-winning 30 Rock star admits in a candid interview with Playboy for its July/August issue (on newsstands and online Friday), after the phone message was exposed, he contemplated killing himself.
At the time of the voicemail, Baldwin and his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, were in the sixth year of their bitter custody battle over the child. In the wake of public outrage about the contents of the message, Baldwin set about repairing his public image, apologizing during an appearance on The View and writing an advice book for divorced fathers, A Promise to Ourselves. But reaching those points proved an arduous climb.
Talked Out of It
Describing his thoughts of killing himself as “very serious,” Baldwin, 51, says, “I spoke to a lot of professionals, who helped me … If I committed suicide, [Kim Basinger's side] would have considered that a victory. Destroying me was their avowed goal.”
His self-destructive state of mind was such, recalls Baldwin, that he also offered to quit 30 Rock and actually went ahead and – briefly – dropped his agent, who also represented Basinger.