Alec Baldwin says the fatal shooting of a crew member on the set of his movie “Rust” has “taken years off” his life, and the actor is vowing never to use real guns again in films.
“There is just this torrent of people attacking me who don’t know the facts,” Baldwin said in an interview with CNN published Friday.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed October on the New Mexico set of “Rust” by a suspected live round. An FBI forensic report released earlier this week found that the prop gun used by Baldwin in the scene that killed Hutchins could not have been fired without pulling the trigger. The 64-year-old performer previously said in an interview that he “didn’t pull the trigger.”
Baldwin told CNN that, going forward, he’ll never work with real guns on a TV or movie set again, instead opting for digital effects in his projects.
The entertainer, who also served as a producer of “Rust” and is facing a lawsuit from Hutchins’s family, said he was in favor of completing the film.
“People talk about finishing the film to honor Halyna and I’m all for that, that’s great,” Baldwin said. “But more importantly, we wanted to put money in the kid’s pocket,” he said of Hutchins’s young son.
Hutchins’s death, Baldwin said, was “the worst thing of all.”
“Somebody died, and it was avoidable. It was so unnecessary,” he said.
“Every day of my life I think about that.”