Alexander Rae Baldwin III (popularly known as Alec Baldwin), is an American actor, writer, comedian, film producer, and political activist. He is the eldest of the four actor brothers in the Baldwin family. Baldwin first gained recognition appearing on the sixth and seventh seasons of the CBS primetime soap opera Knots Landing. He was born on April 3, 1958, in Amityville, New York, United States.

His film bio is quite impressive. Starting in 1988 with the movie Beetlejuice, he now has 90 movies, 37 TV shows, 12 TV events and 11 stage plays to his name. He had a total of 37 nominations for the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes and other industry award-giving bodies.

I am an Alec Baldwin fan and I followed most of his movies and TV shows whenever these are available in the country. Three of my favorites are shown here.

However, I was piqued at him, when in 2016 he started criticizing Donald Trump who was then running for President of the US. Just like other Hollywood liberals, he felt Trump was not good enough to be President. He campaigned and voted for Hillary Clinton.

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Since Trump won, I didn't care much about his politics anymore. He was silent for sometime, in the news and social media. Maybe because of the pandemic. But not for long.

In August 12, 2021 Baldwin was seen going out of a coffee shop, disheveled and unkempt. See photo at the right. This happened two days after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned, citing a need for the state to move on from the sexual harassment scandal that has engulfed his administration in recent months.

Baldwin called the resignation, "tragic". He tweeted to his one million followers:

Baldwin got various adverse reactions from the Twitter universe for he seemed to defend Coumo. He came out with a rather lengthy explanation of what he really meant to say.

You will notice from the picture that he has still his good looks at age 63, disheveled and unkempt notwithstanding. And, he has an all-white hair, mustache and beard. I have that too. Not the looks but the white hair.

So I had an idea. I cropped the image and used it as my profile picture for my blog, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

And then, it was radio silence again. No news of Baldwin in the mainstream and social media. Until October 23, 2021. The world woke up to this headline:

All the while that we were not hearing from Baldwin, he was shooting a movie in New Mexico. He was the lead actor and producer.

While filming his movie "Rust" on Thursday, October 21, Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun that injured the director and killed another crew member. The incident occurred at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

According to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department, the weapon was “discharged” by Baldwin. Baldwin came in voluntarily to speak with investigators, asserting that the situation would be treated like “any other investigation.”

Detectives were trying to determine “what type of projectile was discharged” as the set remained on lockdown. The victims — director Joel Souza and director of photography Halyna Hutchins — were rushed to receive medical attention after being struck. Hutchins, 42, was pronounced dead at University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque.

The 48-year-old filmmaker, for his part, was taken to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center via helicopter. While his condition was initially unknown, Souza’s rep advised that he was released from the hospital on Friday, October 22.

Shortly after the incident, Mr Baldwin said his “heart is broken” at the tragic incident and that he is fully cooperating with police officials."

Mr Baldwin was seen “in tears” outside the sheriff’s office on Thursday night, local reports said. The visibly distressed actor was seen dressed in a navy T-shirt, holding a mask and doubled over in the office’s car parking while talking on a phone call, pictures shared on social media showed.

Police officials said that Mr Baldwin has been cooperative in the investigation which remained “open and active” but no charges have been filed so far.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza and District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies held a press conference.

County Sheriff Adan Mendoza told a press conference among the 500 rounds of ammunition there was “a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and what we are suspecting is live rounds”. He said police have recovered some 600 items of evidence - including three firearms and about 500 rounds of ammunition from the scene

The County Sheriff said investigators believe they have the firearm which was fired by Mr Baldwin as well as a spent shell casing from the shooting. He added a “lead projectile” was recovered from the shoulder of Rust’s injured director - Joel Souza - and handed over as evidence.

“We regard this specific spent casing and recovered projectile to be the live round that was fired from the revolver by Mr Baldwin,” Sheriff Mendoza said. There were 16 people in the vicinity and they have all been interviewed, the Sherrif said.

Police identified the firearm shot by Mr Baldwin as an antique-edition F LLI Pietta Long Colt .45 revolver. Court records say that an assistant director David Halls grabbed the gun from a cart and indicated the weapon was safe by yelling “cold gun".

The film’s armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed said she checked dummy bullets on the day of the shooting to ensure that none were “hot” rounds. She also told a detective that while the guns used for filming were locked up during a crew lunch break, ammunition was left on a cart unsecured, according to a search warrant released Wednesday ahead of the press conference.

Gutierrez Reed told a detective that no live ammo was ever kept on the set. Mr Baldwin, Ms Gutierrez-Reed and Dave Halls all handled the gun, the Sheriff said.

Elsewhere in the press conference, the Sheriff confirmed cameras were not rolling during the rehearsal and there is no footage of the actual incident.