Tragic Details About Alec Baldwin & Kim Basinger's Nasty Divorce

Trigger Warning: the following article contains mentions of suicide.

Around early 2001, the news broke that actors Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger had separated after about seven years of marriage. In her divorce filing, Kim cited "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for the split, also describing Alec as a "tin-pot tyrant and bully" (via Yahoo). At the time, Kim's father, Don Basinger, made it clear that Alec's anger issues played a key role in the divorce, telling People that while he "loved" his then-son-in-law and believed him to be a good man, his temper was undeniably a problem.

To make the situation worse, although Alec and Kim's divorce was technically finalized in 2002, the legal battles continued for some time after the fact. It's no secret that Hollywood has been home to some pretty drawn-out separations, but at the center of this one was the couple's daughter, Ireland Baldwin, who often found herself being dragged into all the drama between her parents. However, while Kim has certainly had some harsh words about Alec's parenting, all parties involved more or less seem to have buried the hatchet in the years since the divorce. "Alec and I have a great relationship," Basinger told Variety in 2025, adding, "I have great respect for where he is today, and his family. You know, we don't spend Christmases and holidays or see each other very much. But we talk." Still, it was undeniably a tumultuous couple of years there. 

One of the tragic details of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger's daughter, Ireland Baldwin, is that her parents' messy divorce had a profound impact on her. Being a child of divorce is difficult enough, even when you don't have high-profile celebrities for your parents. Plus, Ireland wasn't just watching from the sidelines — she occasionally found herself in the middle of all the drama. Take, for example, the infamous leaked voicemail from 2007 in which Alec berated his daughter for not answering his phone calls.

Speaking to The Edit in 2016, Basinger confessed that as a way of making the whole thing up to Ireland, she took a rather laissez-faire approach to raising her. "I just wanted her to be free," the "Batman" star said, adding, "If she wanted to have her friends over and write over the walls with pen, that was fine. I wanted her childhood to be full of love and light and animals and friends" (via E! News).

That said, much like with Basinger, Alec appears to have a markedly better relationship with Ireland these days. In fact, in 2025, Alec noted on an episode of his TLC reality show "The Baldwins" that one of his biggest regrets about the divorce was the impact it had on his eldest daughter.  The actor has since had seven more children with wife Hilaria Baldwin (née Thomas), whom he married in 2012. And according to Alec himself, Ireland has a lot of love for his growing brood.

On the subject of Ireland Baldwin, her father Alec Baldwin has been rather outspoken about the toll the lengthy custody battle between he and ex-wife Kim Basinger took on him. In the aforementioned 2025 episode of "The Baldwins," Alec explained that his and Basinger's legal back-and-forth regarding their daughter took significantly longer than anything else in their settlement. According to Alec, the finances only took a year and a half to work out, but the custody arrangement took seven years to end. "I must say that because my relationship with my daughter, Ireland, was so negatively impacted by my divorce from her mother and having a very protracted custody battle that the media really were having a party about everything," he said (via People).

As part of his 2002 divorce settlement with Basinger, Alec was required to attend anger management therapy, and his contact with Ireland was limited for a time. But while the "Boss Baby" star has since mended fences with both his daughter and his ex-wife to some extent, there is absolutely no love lost between Alec and the family court system itself. The actor went on a characteristically impassioned rant regarding his difficult experience during a 2008 interview with ABC News. "I don't care if the judges and the lawyers die of heart attacks in the process of getting their job done. They are corrupt, inefficient, lazy, stupid — they're the most God-awful people," Alec said.

In one of his most harrowing confessions regarding the fallout of his divorce from Kim Basinger and the strain it put on his relationship with his daughter, Ireland Baldwin, Alec Baldwin admitted that he considered ending his own life at one point. This revelation came in the aforementioned 2008 interview with ABC News. According to the "30 Rock" star, the drawn-out (and incredibly stressful and expensive) legal proceedings, combined with the infamous voicemail leak we mentioned earlier, were absolutely devastating to his mental health.

"I used to pray to God every night. I would get in bed, and I would say, please, don't let me wake up in the morning," Alec said. He even shared that he started to make plans for where he would end his life. The actor went on to say that part of what kept him alive was the fact that he didn't want to cause even more harm to Ireland's mental health. "And then you, obviously you say, well, what would that do to my child if I killed myself? Me, I really didn't care about me," he shared. Fortunately, Alec managed to overcome this dark chapter.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

Alec Baldwin continued to speak at length about the toll his divorce from Kim Basinger took on his mental state in a 2013 interview with The Guardian. The actor revealed that after he and Basinger split in 2001, he more or less went on autopilot when it came to his career. According to Baldwin, much of his professional life became hazy amid the drawn-out legal proceedings.

"That was very painful in so far as someone who I thought wasn't capable of a certain kind of behavior wound up being the Marquis de Sade," the actor said, referencing the extremely controversial 18th-century French author and aristocrat. "That point of my life is a blur," Baldwin continued, further likening that period of constant litigation to the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the Tet Offensive — both notorious military campaigns that took place in Vietnam. "I know exactly what projects I was doing from 1986 to 2000," he said, adding, "And then from 2000–2006 ... I can barely tell you what I did for those six years. It was a period that was so painful, I was staring off a cliff for six years."

If you're wondering, some of Baldwin's projects from that era included live-action films like "Thomas and the Magic Railroad," "Pearl Harbor," and "The Cat in the Hat," as well as animated features like "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" and "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie."

Though Alec Baldwin largely seems to have come out on the other side of his nasty divorce from Kim Basinger, the "Beetlejuice" star has admitted that he still carries a piece of that trauma into his new relationship and family life with his wife, Hilaria Baldwin. In another episode of his reality show "The Baldwins," Alec recalled constantly traveling back and forth between his New York residence and his ex-wife's home in Los Angeles in order to be present in daughter Ireland Baldwin's life. "I thought that would improve things, and it did not improve things," he shared (via People), adding, "Because my relationship with Ireland was so negatively impacted by my experience there getting divorced from her mother, that when it comes to these other kids, I bring all that baggage into this situation, sadly."

That being said, Alec added that he is doing his best to channel that baggage into something positive — namely, being there for the seven kids he shares with Hilaria as much as he possibly can. "This is why I think I'm so focused on parenting to this level, if you will, being around a lot and taking them to school most days, instead of working," he said. Notably, though Alec has by no means retired from the screen, he definitely seems to be taking on fewer acting gigs these days.