Alec Baldwin has shared the one thing he wants above all else for his eight children, and given the times, it is more heartfelt than you might expect.
Speaking to E! News at the premiere of the documentary Gaslit on 12 June, the 68-year-old actor said: “I want my kids to grow up having hope, because right now it’s more hopeless than I’ve ever seen.”
He expanded on the thought with characteristic passion, urging the importance of continued engagement.
“We’ve got to continue to fight to prove to our children that you got to keep fighting. You got to have hope, and you got to keep fighting to take the reins of power in our society, and that responsibility, that awesome responsibility, away from people who are going to abuse it.”
Baldwin shares seven children with wife Hilaria Baldwin, 42: Carmen, 12, Rafael, 10, Leonardo, 9, Romeo, 8, Eduardo, 5, Maria Lucia, 5, and Ilaria, 3. He is also father to Ireland, 30, with his ex-wife Kim Basinger.
He lightened the mood with a joke about his more immediate parental ambitions.
“For a while, I thought I just wanted them to push my wheelchair. I say, ‘I want you guys to work out and get strong because you’re going to be pushing the old man in my chair before long.'”
The remark touches on something Baldwin has spoken about before, the particular challenges of being an older father.
He was in his mid-50s when he and Hilaria welcomed their first child together in 2013, and on a 2025 episode of The Baldwins he reflected on the maths with some candour.
“These kids are gonna turn around and they’re gonna be ready to go to college, and I’m gonna be old. I’ll be 80. I try not to think about that. What I need is more time with my kids, you know?”
Hilaria, who is 26 years younger than her husband, has spoken just as openly about their relationship dynamic.
“Take a 27-year-old yoga instructor married to a rich and famous older man, it sounds ridiculous. It sounds like a bad SNL sketch,” she told the Daily Mail in an interview published on 29 May.
“It worked out luckily, but we poke fun at each other in our family all the time. I think people expect that Alec wanted somebody he could boss around, and we’re on the same level together.”
