Andrea Mandell

USA TODAY

Alec Baldwin knows which episodes in his life haunt his image.

The voicemail he left for daughter Ireland. The ugly aftermath with ex-wife Kim Basinger. The scuffles with paparazzi.

But in Nevertheless (Harper, 272 pp., *** out of four stars), the actor’s new memoir, Baldwin, 59, tells his life story with the kind of hindsight clearly gleaned from years of therapy.

The memoir starts, as most do, with his rocky childhood, this one in Long Island. A scrawny kid called "Xander," he grew up with his five siblings in a tense home where money was a constant headache for his father, a high school teacher, and his mother, a homemaker.

Some memoirs invite speed-reading until the juicier “fame” chapters; but Baldwin, an eloquent writer who attempts to see his past through various vantage points, creates a vivid look at the boy who lost his distant father, whom he adored, too young; the burgeoning young TV star who abused cocaine and alcohol in his 20s, and the man who would gamble on movie fame over Broadway in the mid-‘90s — and come to regret it.

Readers who come for showbiz dish will leave well-served. Baldwin careens through his own IMDB credits, talking frankly of his co-stars, from his favorite leading lady (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the actress everyone wanted (Michelle Pfeiffer). “Poor Michelle, having to deal with everyone falling in love with her,” he wrote of his Married to the Mob co-star (presumably, this included Baldwin).

Ben Affleck, by the way, “is a prince.”

The man who voices the new Boss Baby animated flick is equally circumspect describing his career, charting its highs (The Hunt for Red October, 30 Rock) to various lows (including his loss of the Jack Ryan franchise to Harrison Ford, for whom he barely manages to conceal his contempt 25 years later).

“Ford, in person, is a little man, short, scrawny and wiry, whose soft voice sounds as if it’s coming from behind a door,” says Baldwin, writing caustically of their later run-in at a benefit in L.A.

A section is rightly devoted to Tina Fey, whom he reveals he developed an instant crush on. “When I first met Tina Fey — beautiful and brunette, smart and funny, by turns smug and diffident and completely uninterested in me or anything I had to say — I had the same reaction that I’m sure many men and women have: I fell in love,” says the actor, who first met his 30 Rock boss while hosting Saturday Night Live. Too bad she was married.

But of course, it’s Baldwin's personal travails many will come for, rather than the somewhat indulgent political hand-wringing to be found at the memoir's close (will he or won’t he ever run?).

Baldwin holds little back detailing his relationship with Basinger, alternately giving her kudos in their early days and seething over her actions in their custody battles. Indeed, he offers an intimate look into the dissolution of their relationship. It's remarkably raw, human and relatable.

As for his indelible rise as Saturday Night Live's chief Trump impersonator? Baldwin spills little ink on the matter, but refers to the Trump administration as "this god-awful nightmare."

And his life with his current wife, Hilaria? Baldwin, who met her when he was 53 to her 27, says she buoyed his belief system — and calls him out on his own ego. "Hilaria once said to me, as a means of underscoring some forgetfulness on my part, 'When I’m not with you, I still exist,'" he reveals. They welcomed their third child in September.

Think you know Baldwin? Nevertheless, you still may want to pick up his book.