Can Alec Baldwin ever come back from this Hollywood tragedy?

The pictures of Alec Baldwin doubled over weeping outside the Santa Fe’s sheriff’s office after he accidentally killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, and wounded director Joel Souza, on the set of film Rust last week, are unexpectedly moving in a business built on manipulating fake emotion.

So raw is the actor’s remorse that it adds a fresh layer of painful humanity to an already heartbreaking story. The Hollywood machine is built around protecting stars from such self-exposure – but Baldwin, more than almost any other, has a habit of disregarding Tinseltown wisdom and revealing his emotions for better or worse.

And with Baldwin, more often than not, it’s for worse.

The 63-year-old occupies an almost unique position in Hollywood, seeming to be constantly on the edge of disaster - usually, at least in part, of his own making – and yet somehow surviving PR catastrophes that would fell others.

It’s important to stress, of course, that court documents show the current accident was not of Baldwin’s making. Nonetheless he may struggle with the fallout professionally. It’s not that any blame seems likely to be apportioned to him but because Hollywood tends to attach jinxes to performers and doors may close despite his innocence. And he will definitely struggle personally. His Twitter feed already contains a heartfelt statement ending “my heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.”

The horror of Thursday’s shooting rises above and beyond any of the previous incidents that have coloured the actor’s career. Traditionally, it has been his thin skin and strong opinions that have taken him close to wire. Just Google “Alec Baldwin rant” and keep scrolling. He is outspoken and emotional, often speaking his mind in public on topics more strategic performers would avoid.

At the time of MeToo, for instance, he was publicly critical of Rose McGowan, one of Harvey Weinstein’s most prominent accusers, defended his friend Woody Allen, admitted to bullying and overlooking women “from time to time” and this March shared an Instagram video lambasting cancel culture, insisting Allen and New York governor Andrew Cuomo had not been proven guilty of anything.

His altercations with the press have been enough to turn any publicist’s hair white. In October 1995, he apologised for assaulting a photographer as he brought his three-day-old daughter, Ireland - with then-wife Kim Basinger - home from hospital.

And 2013 was a particularly tense year: in February he denied uttering racial slurs at photographer Gary Miller; in June, he allegedly called a writer a “toxic little queen”; in August, he was pictured pinning a photographer to the bonnet of a car.

He’s been booted off flights, insulted the whole of Florida and had his talk show Up Late with Alec Baldwin cancelled after being accused of yelling homophobic slurs at yet another photographer. He even had the chutzpah to go toe-to-toe with New York cops after being arrested for cycling the wrong way up Fifth Avenue, ending up with a disorderly conduct charge.

In 2020, scandal erupted around his second wife Hilaria – a 37-year-old yoga teacher he married in 2012, and mother of six of his seven children – with her supposed Spanish heritage and accent questioned, after it was revealed that she was born in Boston. Baldwin delivered a bizarre attack on social media, lambasting her accusers as “used coasters with… the stains on them.”

Then there’s the famously furious tirade he left on then 11-year-old Ireland’s voicemail in 2007 – revealed in court during his custody battle with Basinger – where he called his daughter a “rude, thoughtless little pig.” The actor later told Playboy that he’d contemplated suicide over the incident.

And yet, Baldwin inspires a loyalty that survives every one of these contretemps. He usually apologises publicly after losing his temper and regularly comes off social media – at least for a while. He has reunited with his daughter, who delights in teasing him publicly – posting pictures on Instagram of the two of them reading If I Were a Pig. Last week, she took to Instagram to express her sorrow after the shooting: “wishing I could hug my dad extra tight today.”

At the height of MeToo, actresses who had worked with Baldwin over the years phoned him, warning that reporters had been asking whether he had groped them. No story has ever materialised and the calls suggest Baldwin inspires not only loyalty but a sense of protection. People want to look after him, even if he doesn’t look after himself.

In this sense, he is almost unique in Hollywood. When other stars fall from grace, a feeling of “oh finally” often ripples through the industry. With Baldwin, there is never the sense that his peers are hoping he trips up.

In the midst of Baldwin’s rancorous divorce from Basinger, conversely, Basinger’s own father said “I love Alec. He’s the most kind and generous man and he’s overcome some very difficult things. All but one: his anger.” The list of charities he donates to includes animal welfare, military veterans, cancer research, a number of Aids charities and various arts organisations. In a cruel irony, one of Hutchins' last social media posts was of her, Baldwin and the crew of Rust offering support to those striking over wages and health and safety, while Baldwin has been vocal in his support for the crew union - International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

Perhaps people cut him slack because he combines his forthright views with modest opinions of himself. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in 2018 he described a meeting in the late 1980s, before his breakout role in Glengarry Glenn Ross, with two Paramount executives. He asked them about the third Godfather film, which was still casting.

“I’ll never forget it,” he recalled. “One of these guys looks to the other and goes, ‘I know what he wants. He wants the good stuff.'” And in that moment, I realised that these people have an agenda and if you get lucky enough where you’re Leo [DiCaprio] or you’re Jack Nicholson, and your agenda intersects with their agenda, great; otherwise … most people don’t go to the moon… and it’s the same with movie stars. Not everybody gets to go as far as you can go. And I accept that.”

It’s this clear-sightedness that has helped restart what seems to be a career often on the verge of cancellation. One champion of his, the comic Tina Fey, cast him as Jack Donaghy – an aggressive, meat-eating corporate manipulator in her sitcom 30 Rock - and has been effusive in her praise for him. This despite Baldwin admitting, in his memoir, that he fell in love with her at first sight – “beautiful, smart and funny, by turns smug and diffident and completely uninterested in me or anything I had to say,” he wrote, adding he was disappointed to learn she was not only married but her husband was within earshot.

Of course, clear-sightedness is only going to go so far. Someone like Baldwin, who lives with skin so thin, is bound to feel tragedy as intensely as he expresses anger. He may have shaken off past controversies, but whether he can put a devastating event of this magnitude behind him will now be the ultimate Hollywood test.