Alec Baldwin says the death of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins has cost him acting jobs and taken “years” off his life due to stress.
The 64-year-old actor fatally shot Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza on the Rust set on 21 October, after assistant director David Halls allegedly handed him a prop gun that turned out to be loaded with live ammunition.
In a new interview with CNN, Baldwin said he’d lost out on five jobs due to the fallout from the shooting, which he denies responsibility for.
“I got fired from another job yesterday,” he said. “There I was all set to go to a movie, jump on a plane... I’ve been talking with these guys for months and they told me yesterday we don’t want to do the film with you because of this.”
A few weeks after the incident, former US president Donald Trump baselessly suggested that Baldwin may have deliberately shot his two colleagues.
Baldwin told CNN that the stress of these accusations has “taken years off my life”.
“There is just this torrent of people attacking me who don’t know the facts,” he said.
The 30 Rock star added that he believes he would have quit the film industry if it wasn’t for his wife, Hilaria Baldwin.
“If I didn’t have my wife, I don’t know where I would be right now,” he said. “If I didn’t have her, I probably would have quit, retired, gone off, you know sold everything I owned, got a house in the middle of nowhere and just you know did find something else to do, sell real estate.”
While New Mexico’s Office of Medical Investigator officially ruled the shooting was an accident, Baldwin has blamed Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who served as the armorer on the film, and assistant director Dave Halls, who handed him the weapon.
Both Gutierrez-Reed and Halls deny responsibility for Hutchins’ death.
No decision has yet been made by prosecutors on whether Baldwin, or anyone else, will face criminal charges.
