Ireland and dad Alec
Baldwin face off.
His new wife Hilaria
calls them her “two
little Zoolanders.”
Baldw
By Annie Karni
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W
hen Alec Baldwin tied
the knot with his yogi
girlfriend, Hilaria
Thomas, in June, friends
experienced a brief moment of déjà vu.
At St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in
Nolita, down an aisle adorned with white
hydrangeas, roses and calla lilies strode
an Amazonian blonde—tendrils of hair
curling around her neck, blue eyes full
of emotion, lips poised in a lush pout.
ut.
Dressed in a strapless silk chiffon gown,
the stunning woman was the spitting
image of Kim Basinger, who sauntered
across an East Hampton beach to wed
the eldest of the famous Baldwin brothers 19 years ago.
This time, however, the ravishing
blonde was their 16-year-old daughter,
Ireland, who was giving her father away
8/24/12 12:04:31 PM
@IRELANDBBALDWIN/TWITTER; @ALECBALDWIN/TWITTER;
Her father once
declared her “a
thoughtless little pig”
in a vicious viral
voicemail. But now
Ireland Baldwin,
all grown up and
taller than Alec, is
planning a second act.
Billy, Ireland and
Alec rock out
during Alec’s
wedding
festivities in June.
At the ceremony,
Ireland walked
her father down
the aisle.
Flirtatious and
fabulous, the
mature-for-her-age
16-year-old tries
glam on for size—
and it fits!
win2.
win
2.0
@IRELANDBBALDWIN/TWITTER; @ALECBALDWIN/TWITTER;
@HILARIABALDWIN/TWITTER
A happy (and bearded) Alec plays with
Ireland when she
was just a hoodieclad toddler in the
late ’90s.
to a petite 28-year-old young en
enough
to be her sister.
Alec Baldwin has faced a tumultuous
year, from getting kicked off a plane for
playing Words With Friends and punching photographers to tweeting a blow-byblow of his burgeoning love affair. But his
bride isn’t the only woman who’s been
in his corner through it all; he’s also bolstered by Ireland—the daughter he once
called “a thoughtless little pig.”
Until this past summer, Ireland was
known mainly as the innocent 11-yearold who was reamed out by her abusivesounding father when she forgot to
answer his call. She was the only child of
an explosive marriage between two erratic movie stars.
But now Ireland is all grown up—at
6-foot-2, she towers over her father—
A budding actress, Ireland
isn’t afraid to show herself
up-close and personal on
her popular Twitter feed.
and has her own fans, as evidenced by
an impressive (and expanding) 14,775
Twitter followers. Among her 140-character blasts are candid, intimately framed
photos that reveal chummy relationships
with each of her parents. In fact, Ireland
brushes off the infamous voicemail incident as no big thing.
“I’ve always had a really great relationship with my dad,” she tells Page Six
Magazine from the California cottage
where she lives with her Academy
Award–winning mom. “The only problem with that voicemail was that people
made it out to be a way bigger deal than
it was. He’s said stuff like that before just
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I
n the early ’90s Alec Baldwin and
Kim Basinger were the archetypal
Hollywood couple. He was the TV
star turned movie hunk who broke
out in 1990’s Hunt for Red October. She
was a shy model turned actress most
famous for having played a Bond girl in
1983’s Never Say Never Again, which she
publicized by posing nude for Playboy.
The two met on the 1991 set of The
Marrying Man, a romantic comedy that
flopped at the box office but sparked a
heated love affair. They married in 1993
and filmed another movie, The Getaway,
but the couple soon gained a reputation
for being difficult to work with.
Two years into married life, Kim
became pregnant with Ireland. Standing in her bathroom in Los Angeles,
her assistant by her side, Kim dolefully
informed Alec he was going to be a father,
according to Alec’s 2009 memoir A Promise to Ourselves. “The moment...was more
like someone telling you that they had
wrecked your car. Or that your house had
been flooded,” he writes.
As a sign of the rage to come, on October 26, 1995, with his new baby girl in his
arms on the way home from the hospital,
Alec punched a photographer, the Los
Angeles Times reported.
Three years later, Kim won an Oscar for
her performance in L.A. Confidential. But
her rising star only put more strain on the
unhappy family. “I had outlived my usefulness to her,” Alec writes. “I accompanied
her to Africa in the fall of 1998, but I was
really just the third nanny in rotation.”
In 1999 Alec moved the family from
Los Angeles to his childhood home on
Long Island. But Massapequa depressed
Kim, and in 2001, when Ireland was 5, she
packed up her daughter, booked a plane
to L.A. and promptly served her husband
with divorce papers while he was on the
Midtown set of Shortcut to Happiness.
That Christmas, the animosity between
the exes turned into all-out war. Kim and
her daughter had flown to upstate New
York to spend the holiday with Alec; the
plan had been for them to stay in a hotel
and for Alec to stay with his sister. But
when Ireland asked if she could stay with
her father instead, Kim’s jealousy flared
up, Alec writes. She looked “like she’d
been hit by an electric current.” From
that moment on, the moat was up around
Ireland and lawyers dictated Alec’s visits.
The following spring, in June 2002,
Alec was granted permission to see
Ireland every other weekend. He rented
a house near his ex-wife and kept the
fridge stocked with Ireland’s favorite
snacks—olives and cheese.
But it was far from the day-to-day relationship he craved. “I refused to settle
for becoming a ‘Disney Dad,’ ” he writes
in his book. “I wanted to be a real father.”
In 2005, when Ireland was 9, Alec received a call from the California Department of Child Services investigating
a child abuse claim. According to the
The once-happy threesome
strut the streets as a family
in the early aughts.
“People made [the
voicemail] out to be a
way bigger deal than it
was. He’s said stuff like
that before because he’s
frustrated. For me, it was
like, ‘OK, whatever.’ ”
— Ireland Baldwin
report, Ireland had told her therapist
she felt “unsafe” visiting her father after
overhearing an argument he’d had with
a girlfriend. The court investigated the
incident, found no cause for concern and
restored his visitation rights. He dug his
own hole, however, the following year.
It was 7:30 p.m. on April 11, 2007, and
Alec was dining on the Upper West Side
with friends. He excused himself from
the table to make a court-appointed
phone call to his daughter. Instead of
hearing her voice on the other end, his
call went straight to voicemail. When the
beep came, he snapped:
“I’ve made an ass of myself, trying to get
to a phone to call you at a specific time,”
Alec railed in a three-minute tirade of
threats that swirled around the Internet.
(Alec has claimed in the past that Kim
leaked the tape to TMZ, but she denies it.)
“I don’t give a damn that you’re 12
years old, or 11 years old, or that you’re a
child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass....You’ve made me feel
like a fool over and over and over again.
I’m going to straighten your ass out….
BIG PICTURES
because he’s frustrated. For me it was
like, ‘OK, whatever.’ I called him back,
I was like, ‘Sorry, Dad, I didn’t have my
phone.’ That was it.”
Despite the damage the voicemail
caused the family—Alec lost his visitation rights for almost a year—Ireland
says she and her father joke about it now.
“We almost did something funny on
YouTube, of me calling him and yelling at
him,” she laughs. “We were just talking
about it the other week.”
Ireland and Alec have grown so close,
in fact, that she’s decided to leave the
L.A. school she’s attended for the past 10
years and move to New York City, where
she’ll be educated at home, in order to
spend more time with Alec and Hilaria.
“I didn’t want to go my senior year
without spending time with my dad,” she
says. “And Hilaria and I are really close.
She’s like a big sister to me, but I feel like
I haven’t spent enough time with her yet.
We have a lot more to learn about each
other and we have a lot more experiences
to have together. We joke around and I
call her ‘Mom.’ But I respect her, it’s not
like I’m Parent Trap-ping her, setting up
booby traps in her room.”
“Can we get matching nails when I
come up there?” Ireland tweeted at Hilaria on July 20. The answer? An effusive
tweet back: “Of course!”
But it wasn’t always happy hashtags,
Instagram photos and retweets. The
Baldwins arrived at this openly affectionate family life after a difficult journey
riddled with lawsuits, public condemnation and even thoughts of suicide.
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“No matter how
much you think you
understand a Baldwin,
you really don’t unless
you are one. Ireland
and I are pretty sane
for Baldwins.”
— Alaia Baldwin, Alec’s niece
Ireland goofs off with Hilaria,
who she considers a “big sister”;
below, Ireland’s “truth” tattoo,
etched on the back of her neck.
T
oday, as he embarks on his second marriage, Alec is reaping
the benefits of his uphill battle
to stay in his daughter’s life.
“Alec kept hanging in there, I know he
did,” Shatz says. “Even in the height of it
all, he had a house in Beverly Hills so he
could stay in contact with his daughter.
He hung in there, and kids know that and
appreciate it. When a child is alienated,
it can take until she gets older to soften,
and it seems like in this case it did.”
Today Ireland, known among friends
as Dublin or Beezy, is so softened she
even pokes fun at her father’s temper:
“We’re about to get kicked off Virgin Atlantic... Here we go again,” she joked on
Twitter earlier this year, posting a picture
of her father engrossed in his cellphone
at takeoff.
But she also says she understands his
anger at the paparazzi.
“My dad has been going through it for
so long, I can see how he gets frustrated,”
says Ireland. “For me, it’s all so new and
fresh. If acting or modeling takes off, and
I make a name for myself, I can see how I
might get pretty frustrated.”
For now, she continues to live a
relatively normal life. “I grew up going
to school, participating in sports; I had a
regular schedule,” she says. “I don’t live
in a five-story mansion, I don’t drive a
Lamborghini. I live in a modest cottage
and my mom cooks for me every night.
The only difference being the kid of two
celebrities is nothing in your life is going
to be kept private and you have to watch
your own back. I’ve had people who I
thought were my friends, but it turned
out they just wanted concert tickets.”
That’s part of the reason Ireland
counts her cousins, Alaia, 19, and Hailey,
16, (daughters of Alec’s younger brother
Stephen), as part of her small inner
circle. And also probably why she shares
so much on Twitter: She’s the one in
control.
“No matter how much you think you
understand a Baldwin, you really don’t
unless you are one,” Alaia Baldwin tells
Page Six Magazine. “Ireland and I are
pretty sane for Baldwins.”
Ireland and Alaia started a Tumblr
blog where they answer questions from
fans, post pictures of themselves and
write about their healthy eating
regimens.
“Hilaria is pretty extreme,” Ireland
says of her Mallorca-born stepmother,
whom she credits with reversing Alec’s
pre-diabetic state through a dietary shift.
“I’m not so disciplined where I don’t
ever touch sugar, but I’m an advocate of
a healthy lifestyle.”
Because of her experience with countless shrinks growing up, Ireland is also
interested in studying child psychology.
“I’ve seen so many psychologists
because courts have ruled that I have
to go,” she says. “I had a few that were
good, but I had 500 other ones that were
terrible. They talk to you in a baby voice,
or look at you like you’re a dog or something. I’ve been around so many a-hole
therapists that I thought, ‘Wait. I could
do better.’ I love working with kids.”
For now, though, she just plays the
role of adviser to her friends. “I’m not
a drinker or a smoker,” she says. “I love
going to parties, and I love dancing. Sure,
I’ve had a drink before, but I’ve never
done drugs.”
She’s also chosen to save sex for marriage, and her current boyfriend is just
fine with that. “I just believe that sex is
important and worth waiting for,” Ireland says. “The outcome of that would
bring forth a stronger relationship.”
That said, she’s no prude, either. She
was flattered when a reader admitted
to masturbating to her pictures on the
Internet: “You’re so sweet! Thanks!” she
wrote back. And when a fan told her he
wanted to have sex with Kim Basinger,
she didn’t shy away from acknowledging her mom’s MILF status: “Get in line,
pal,” she responded.
After years of upheaval, Ireland has
clearly grown into a feisty yet welladjusted teen with a sense of humor
similar to her dad’s. She says she sees
both her parents as role models. “[They]
didn’t really have anything handed to
them,” she says. “They worked hard and
that’s inspirational to me. I never want
to get anything handed to me.”
And she’s nothing if not earnest. She
even has the word truth tattooed on the
back of her neck. It’s there to remind her,
as she once said in a tweet, “how damaging lies can be.”
FROM TOP: @ALECBALDWIN/TWITTER; LAWRENCE SCHWARTZWALD/SPLASH NEWS
You’re a rude, thoughtless, little pig.”
L.A.-based family therapist Jane Shatz,
who coached Alec through his divorce
and custody battle, insists the reaction
was not out of the ordinary. (Alec and
Kim declined to comment for this story.)
“It takes a lot of strength to detach
from strong feelings,” she says. “If the
child defies us, it takes a rare person not
to take it personally and not to act in
anger. Besides the death of a child, alienation is the most painful thing a parent
can go through.”
Alec’s visitation rights were suspended
and he didn’t see Ireland for almost a
year. “My relationship with my only child
was ruined, and I was powerless to resolve that,” Alec wrote of the aftermath,
during which he offered his resignation
from every board he served on and asked
to be released from his 30 Rock contract.
“I began to think about what little town
I would repair to in order to commit
suicide,” he wrote.
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