Alec Baldwin’s Leaked Voicemail To His Then-11-Year-Old Daughter: The Furious Message And The Fallout

You probably know Alec Baldwin for the Rust set shooting in 2021 and all the legal fallout that came with it. But rewind to 2007, when a private voicemail to his then-11-year-old daughter, Ireland, exploded into a very public mess. It is one of those Hollywood family moments that got dragged into the spotlight and never really left the conversation.

The voicemail that went everywhere

Back when Baldwin and ex-wife Kim Basinger were co-parenting, he left Ireland a furious voicemail. TMZ got hold of it and published the audio, and, well, it was rough: he was yelling, clearly angry she had not picked up her phone, lashing out at Basinger, and ordering his daughter to be ready to meet him on Friday the 20th. The line that stuck to him for years was this:

'rude, thoughtless little pig'

What was supposed to be a private (and frankly ugly) parent-child moment turned into a PR wildfire, with everyone weighing in on celebrity parenting, anger, and where the line is.

Baldwin’s explanation, Basinger’s response

After the backlash, Baldwin tried to put context around it. In a statement via the BBC, he apologized for losing his temper, saying he had been pushed there by years of feeling shut out from his daughter during a brutal custody fight.

As he put it, he was 'sorry... for losing my temper with my child' and said he had been driven to the edge by what he described as parental alienation.

Basinger’s camp shot back hard. Her spokesperson said the problem was not alienation; it was Baldwin’s ongoing aggressive behavior. The priority, they said, was protecting Ireland, and Baldwin needed to address what they called unstable and irrational behavior if he wanted to repair the relationship.

Ireland grows up and cracks a joke

Fast-forward eight years. In 2015, Ireland Baldwin showed she had moved on enough to poke fun at the whole thing. She posted a photo of herself with her dad reading the children’s book 'If I Were a Pig' and captioned it: 'If I Were a Pig ... I would be Rude and Thoughtless of course!' She also told Page Six the voicemail did not define their relationship and that people blew it out of proportion. Her memory of it was basically: 'I called him back, I was like, Sorry Dad, I didn’t have my phone.'

The bigger picture

• 2004: After a long court battle, Baldwin and Basinger are awarded joint custody of Ireland.
• 2007: The voicemail leaks via TMZ, igniting days of headlines and public shaming.
• 2015: Ireland publicly jokes about the incident and tells Page Six the whole thing was made to seem bigger than it was.
• Now: At 29, with her 30th birthday coming up on October 23, Ireland writes on Substack that she is setting boundaries and stepping away from extended family members she describes as narcissistic, unreliable, or dealing with addiction. Her words were blunt:

'I move into 30 with a lot less weight on my shoulders... the need to continue to carry my narcissistic, unreliable, addict family members... Nothing was more freeing than finally realizing how poisonous these people are... this is how you break these cycles.'

Where it landed

It is messy, human stuff. The voicemail was awful. The custody fight was uglier. Baldwin says he snapped because he felt pushed out; Basinger’s team says the problem was him. Ireland, for her part, seems to have made peace with that moment while drawing firmer lines for herself as an adult. Hollywood loves a public meltdown, but the long tail here is less scandal, more slow, uncomfortable growth.