Kim Basinger Opens Up About 'Nasty' Divorce From Alec Baldwin

Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin have come a long way since their notoriously messy divorce. 

After splitting up in 2001, the exes became embroiled in a four-year custody battle over their only daughter, Ireland. 

The court battle turned particularly ugly in 2007, when Baldwin called Ireland, then 11, and left an angry voicemail that was leaked to the press. As part of an agreement with Basinger, the "30 Rock" actor agreed to attend an anger management course.

These days, Basinger said she and Baldwin have moved on from the drama of the past.

"[Alec and I are] cool now," Basinger, 62, said in a new interview with Net-A-Porter's The Edit magazine. "Life goes on.'" 

The "L.A. Confidential" actress also opened up about how the divorce impacted Ireland, who's now 20 years old and an aspiring model. 

"Divorce is hard on a kid, no matter how you cut it," she said. "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."

Baldwin and Basinger met in 1990 on the set of the movie "The Marrying Man" and wed three years later. In the Net-A-Porter interview, Basinger joked about their fateful meeting.  

"I did this film, 'The Marrying Man,' where I met my eventual [ex] husband, Alec Baldwin, but I was teeter-tottering because I had also been offered 'Sleeping with the Enemy' [a role which eventually went to Julia Roberts]," she said. "Isn't it funny that I turned down 'Sleeping with the Enemy' and then I went on to sleep with the enemy!" 

Baldwin, who's been married to second wife Hilaria Thomas Baldwin since 2012, has also opened up about the difficult divorce in recent years, likening it to a Vietnam battle.

"That point of my life is a blur. I know exactly what projects I was doing from 1986 to 2000," he said in a 2013 interview with The Guardian. "And then from 2000 to 2006, during the Dien Bien Phu of my divorce litigation ... I can barely tell you what I did for those six years. It was a period that was so painful, I was staring off a cliff for six years.”

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