Alec Baldwin: 'I Don't Want to Leave N.Y.'

October 8, 2001 -- Alec Baldwin reported for work in Los Angeles this week, but his heart is still in New York

According to the New York Daily News' Mitchell Fink, the politically minded actor said, "I don't want to leave. I feel like now is one of the greatest times to be in New York, because we're going to see all these great ideas flowing about how we're going to change the way we live here."

Added the actor, who played avenging aviator Col. Jimmy Doolittle in Pearl Harbor, "And then there's that weird part of me that thinks if New York got bombed again, I want to be here. I'd rather die getting bombed in a New York bombing than live some kind of shallow life somewhere else."

Baldwin is in Los Angeles for the next 10 weeks to make the HBO movie Path to War, which is not about current events, but about Lyndon B. Johnson's administration during the Vietnam War. Baldwin plays former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Although the actor makes his home in New York, his ex-wife, Kim Basinger and their 7-year-old daughter, Ireland, are ensconced on the West Coast.