Kit Bowen
CREDIT: Getty Images
It’s all “cool now,” but that wasn’t always the case.
In an interview with Net-a-Porter’s magazine The Edit this week, Basinger explained, “Divorce is hard on a kid, no matter how you cut it. And ours was very public and nasty. So I brought up Ireland in a very unconventional way. I just wanted her to be free. If she wanted to have her friends over and write over the walls with pen, that was fine. I wanted her childhood to be full of love and light and animals and friends.”
Basigner and Baldwin met on the set of the 1990 comedy The Marrying Man and wed three years later. In 2001, Kim filed for divorce and then the two spent the next year bitterly fighting over custody of 6-year-old Ireland. They finally reached an agreement in 2002.
Baldwin, too, has spoken about that “painful” time of his life, including the voice mail scandal in 2007 when a message, in which he called Ireland, “a rude, thoughtless pig,” was leaked to the media. He penned a book in 2008 called A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce.
“[Alec and I are] cool now, though. Life goes on,” Basigner said.
E! News reports Basinger has been linked romantically to her longtime hairstylist Mitch Stone since late 2014. “My taste in men has changed a lot over the years,” she told The Edit. “When you’re young, you’re attracted to the ‘bad boy,’ only to find out that they’re actually just bullies or insecure—you’re attracted to fantasies. Now, I’m more reality-based.”
Baldwin is now married to yoga instructor Hilaria Thomas, and they have two children, Carmen, 2, and Rafael, who will turn 1 in June; they are expecting a third child, another son, this year.