Alec Baldwin - Early Life

Early Life

Baldwin was born on Long Island, New York; sources are divided as to whether in Amityville or Massapequa, New York. He is the son of Carolyn Newcomb (née Martineau) and Alexander Rae Baldwin, Jr., a high school history/social studies teacher and football coach. Baldwin was raised a Roman Catholic, in a family of Irish, English, and French descent. He has three younger brothers, Daniel, William, and Stephen, who also became actors. Baldwin has two sisters, Beth Baldwin Keuchler (born 1955), and Jane Baldwin Sasso (born 1965).

Baldwin attended Alfred G. Berner High School in Massapequa, Long Island, and played football there under Coach Bob Reifsnyder, who is in the College Football Hall of Fame. In New York City, Baldwin worked as a busboy at the famous disco, Studio 54. From 1976 to 1979, he attended George Washington University, afterwards transferring to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he studied acting with Elaine Aiken and Geoffrey Horne at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, and, later still, being accepted as a member of the Actors Studio. Baldwin would eventually return to NYU in 1994, graduating with a BFA that year. On May 12, 2010, he gave a commencement address at New York University and was awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts degree, honoris causa.