Alec Baldwin was born in Amityville on April 3, 1958. Over the course of his career, he has received several awards and nominations including three Emmy Awards, eight Screen Actors Guild Awards, three Golden Globes, a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a theater work for his Broadway work and a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination for The Cooler.

The first of four sons of spouses Carolyn and Alexander Baldwin, his family has Irish, French and British origins. Already at the age of 9 he was the protagonist of an amateur film entitled Frankenstein. Before taking the stage he worked as a waiter, chauffeur and salesman of T-shirts. He has three brothers, all actors: Daniel, William and Stephen, known as the Baldwin brothers. His father died of cancer in 1983.

In May 1990, Baldwin met actress Kim Basinger while filming the film The Marrying Man. The two married on August 19, 1993 and have a daughter, Ireland, born on October 23, 1995. Baldwin and Basinger married they separated on December 5, 2000 and divorced on September 3, 2002. Following a turbulent divorce, Baldwin faced a long and arduous legal battle to continue seeing and dating his daughter.

In August 2011, Baldwin started dating Hillary Thomas, now known as Hilaria, a yoga instructor and co-founder of the Yoga Vida chain in Manhattan, New York. Baldwin and Thomas moved from the Upper West Side to Greenwich Village in August.

The couple got officially engaged in April 2012 and tied the knot on June 30, 2012 at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. On August 23, 2013 they become parents of a girl called Carmen Gabriela and on June 17, 2015 they have another son, Rafael Thomas; on 12 September 2016 the third child was born, Leonardo Àngel Charles, while on 17 May 2018 it was the turn of the fourth, Romeo Alejandro David. Eduardo Pau Lucas was born on September 8, 2020. In 2021, daughter María Lucía Victoria was born to a surrogate mother. Finally, Ilaria Catalina Irena was born on September 22, 2022.

On October 21, 2021, while filming on the set of the film Rust, Baldwin unintentionally caused the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and the injury of director Joel Souza, by firing a handgun loaded with live ammunition. On January 19, 2023, the New Mexico Attorney General's Office indicted Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter.