Hollywood: get ready to say "so long, farewell" to Alec Baldwin.
The Emmy-winning star of 30 Rock says that he plans to quit acting when his contract for the NBC show expires in 2012.
Says Baldwin in the December issue of Men's Journal: "I don't have any interest in acting anymore." At 51, he points out, "I'm not young, but I have time to do something else."
And while the actor has gotten the best reviews of his career playing Republican, bottom-line-obsessed Jack Donaghy on the hit comedy, he harshly dismisses all of his work on the big screen:
"I consider my entire movie career a complete failure," declares the star of The Hunt for Red October and Glengarry Glen Ross.
Huh? "The goal of moviemaking," he explains, "is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that."
And, yes, Baldwin still regrets the infamous, leaked voicemail in which he called daughter Ireland a "rude, thoughtless little pig." "I feel the consequences of that every day," he tells the magazine.
Baldwin's protracted custody fight with ex-wife Kim Basinger has affected his love life, too, leading to the recent dissolution of a seven-year relationship with another woman. Yet he claims that he doesn't mind. "I'd rather be lonely than wrong," he says.
