As actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger leaves office, “30 Rock” star Alec Baldwin has once again expressed an interest in running for political office.
“Yes, [political office] is something that I’m very very interested in,” Baldwin said in a “Parker Spitzer” interview that aired Wednesday.
“People would say to me all the time, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ And sometimes I don’t want to do it because to leave what I’m doing now would be extremely painful.”
Baldwin’s passion for acting might be too strong for him to part ways with the profession.
“The old line in my business is, ‘By the time you are old enough to understand the character of Hamlet, you’re too old to play Hamlet,'” Baldwin said. “I’ve grown to really love where I am now in my business and to quit now when it really feels good and doing it feels good would be an enormously difficult thing to do.”
Baldwin echoed former Alaska governor Sarah Palin in questioning the necessity of Ivy League-educated presidents.
“We’ve had 22 years of Yale and Harvard and the problems aren’t getting solved,” Baldwin said. “We need … people who really have not lost sight of what the middle class in this country needs.”
Aside from acting, Baldwin blogs for the Huffington Post and advocates for PETA. He also narrated a graphic pro-animal rights PETA video entitled, “Meet Your Meat.”
During parental custody battles in 2007, Baldwin famously left an explosively angry telephone message for his then 11-year-old daughter in which he repeatedly called her a pig.
“I could be shouting shit at random people on the street, but I’m calling you,” Baldwin told his daughter. “I don’t care that you’re twelve or eleven or whatever, are you pig enough to pick it up? I’m a good father, and you’re a pig. I don’t give a shit. Good father. You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you thoughtless pain in the ass?…Get mad you daughter-of-a-bitch.”
In 2006, Baldwin told the New York Times, “If I ever ran for anything, the thing I would like to be is governor of New York.”
When asked if he was qualified to run, Baldwin told the Times, “That’s what I hate about Schwarzenegger. His only credentials are that he ran a fitness program under some bygone president … I’m Tocqueville compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
[WATCH: Parker/Spitzer: Alec Baldwin ready to enter politics?”]
