After nearly 50 years in Hollywood, Alec Baldwin, 68, says he’s ready to walk away from acting for good, announcing his desire to retire and focus on family life during an appearance on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast.
“I was home and I got used to it, and I don’t want to leave my house anymore. I don’t want to work anymore. I want to retire and stay home with my kids.”
The career that launched in 1988 with Beetlejuice and included The Hunt for Red October and a seven-season Emmy-winning run on 30 Rock may be coming to a quiet end, overshadowed by trauma that Baldwin says has fundamentally altered his life.
Baldwin shares seven young children with his wife Hilaria Baldwin. He also has a 30-year-old daughter, Ireland Baldwin, from his marriage to actress Kim Basinger.
The turning point came on October 21, 2021, when Baldwin was rehearsing a scene at a ranch outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the Western film Rust. The gun he was holding discharged, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
Assistant director Dave Halls had declared the weapon a “cold gun” — industry speak for unloaded and safe. However, armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed had loaded a live round into the revolver. Baldwin has consistently maintained he pulled back the hammer but never pulled the trigger, and the gun fired on its own.
Speaking on the Awards Chatter podcast, Baldwin described the tragedy as “unspeakably difficult to deal with.”
A Santa Fe judge dismissed involuntary manslaughter charges against Baldwin in July 2024 after his defense team uncovered that live ammunition connected to the shooting had been turned over to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office but buried in a separate case folder and never disclosed to the defense. The judge ruled that prosecutorial misconduct was a fatal flaw warranting dismissal.
Prosecutors tried to appeal the dismissal but eventually withdrew that appeal in December 2024, officially ending the criminal case against Baldwin.
Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison in April 2024. She was released in May 2025.
On the Dopey podcast in late 2025, Baldwin described the toll: “If I told you what my health conditions have been since Oct. 21 of 2021, it’s taken 10 years off of my life.” He said the ordeal “broke every nerve in my body, spiritually, financially, work-wise, career-wise.”
The legal battles have continued beyond criminal proceedings. On April 17, 2026, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maurice Leiter ruled that Baldwin must face a civil jury trial over the shooting, scheduled to begin on Oct. 12, 2026. The case was brought by Serge Svetnoy, a gaffer on the Rust set, who alleges he suffered emotional distress after the bullet that killed Hutchins narrowly missed him. Leiter rejected defense arguments that Baldwin and Rust Movie Productions bore no responsibility for set safety, allowing claims of negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and punitive damages to proceed. “A reasonable jury could find that Mr. Baldwin recklessly disregarded the probability that pointing a gun in the direction of someone, with the finger on the trigger, would cause emotional distress,” the judge wrote. Baldwin’s assault claim was dismissed — the judge found no evidence he intended to harm anyone — but the core negligence case moves forward.
Baldwin filed his own civil lawsuit in January 2025 for malicious prosecution and civil rights violations. The suit named special prosecutor Kari Morrissey, Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies, three investigators from the sheriff’s office, and the county board of commissioners.
Completing Rust became an obligation under a settlement with Matthew Hutchins, Halyna Hutchins’ husband. Baldwin described it bluntly: “We gave him the movie and said, You sell it and do whatever you want with it.”
Filming resumed in Montana, where Baldwin struggled with repeated blackouts from orthostatic hypotension — a nerve condition caused by blood pressure medication — that left him bedridden for over a week.
The completed movie debuted in select theaters in May 2025.
In February 2025, Baldwin and Hilaria Baldwin premiered a TLC reality show called The Baldwins. Critics called it a distasteful image rehabilitation attempt. However, on the show Hilaria Baldwin revealed her husband had been diagnosed with PTSD, and Baldwin himself admitted “I’m happier when I’m asleep than when I’m awake.”
Baldwin has a few minor roles in development, including Kockroach, a crime thriller starring Chris Hemsworth, Zazie Beetz, and Channing Tatum. He also worked with director Rory Kennedy on The Trial of Alec Baldwin, a documentary about the legal fallout. That film premiered at DOC NYC in November 2025, but a wider release date hasn’t been set.
The Alec Baldwin who existed before October 2021 is gone. What’s left is someone who sounds exhausted.