Hilaria Baldwin and Alec in Therapy for Age-Gap Marriage

Alec Baldwin’s wife Hilaria has revealed she and the Hollywood star have therapy to navigate their 26-year age-gap – and admitted she lost part of her identity after their marriage.

Speaking on Caroline Stanbury’s Uncut And Uncensored podcast, the 41-year-old mother of seven opened up about the challenges of her 13-year marriage to the Rust star, 67.

‘I don’t believe that age is just a number, at least in our situation,’ she said. 

‘There are certain things where I have to look at him and say, he has 26 more years of experience. And sometimes that’s a flex, and sometimes that means that we need to do a little therapy.’

The couple met in 2011 at a restaurant in Manhattan and married the following year, later welcoming seven children together – Carmen,12, Rafael, ten, Leonardo, nine, Romeo, seven, Eduardo, five, María Lucía, four, and Ilaria, three. 

Alec also shares daughter Ireland, 30, with his first wife, actress Kim Basinger, 71.

The former yoga instructor, who was recently voted off this year’s Dancing with the Stars, added that while much has been written about her supposedly pushing for a large family, it was in fact Alec who was ‘the instigator’.

‘Can I tell you, he’d have more,’ she said. ‘I’m the one who’s like, no more, thank you very much. He would have more. He’s the second oldest of six. 

‘And he had the very notorious, complicated situation with his previous wife and with Ireland. I think he wanted a chance to do it in a different way and make different choices.’

She added that though life in the Baldwin household is often chaotic, it’s also full of love: ‘Ultimately, we always remind ourselves, there’s such beauty to it. It was very well thought out.’

Despite their close bond, Hilaria admitted their relationship is not without conflict.

‘Do we have our hard moments? Do we have our normal, marital arguments? One hundred percent,’ she said. 

‘But it’s the desire to both want to be there and to both want to make it work. When you have that, I think you can go through anything together.’

The couple’s marriage has been tested in ways few could imagine. 

In 2021, cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on the set of Alec’s Western film Rust when a prop gun discharged.

Alec was charged with involuntary manslaughter, but the case was dismissed last year after what Hilaria describes as ‘an extreme level of corruption’.

She recalled how filming for their family reality show, The Baldwins, began just two weeks before the trial – at a time when they were living in ‘survival mode’.

‘Sometimes I get very overwhelmed,’ she admitted. ‘Sometimes I cry. Sometimes Alec and I will argue. I look over my shoulder and I’m like, where’s the other adults here? And then I realize I’m the mom. I’m the one that has to guide my children.’

Hilaria said she feared the worst before the trial began. 

She said: ‘I said to the crew, ‘Okay, we’re going to break for us to go to this, and then we’re going to resume in a few weeks once the trial is over. But what if I don’t bring him home? What do I do?’ I didn’t know what our life was going to be. 

‘It allowed us to speak when the world was telling us not to speak. You really suffer when you don’t have an outlet. When so many people are talking about you, to be able to show yourself – our family, my husband, the experience from the inside – felt very cathartic in real time.’

Hilaria also reflected on the personal toll of becoming ‘Alec Baldwin’s wife’ – and how she has struggled to define herself outside of his fame.

‘I think in many ways, I did lose part of my identity when I married Alec,’ she confessed. 

‘That was not only other people talking about me for the first time on a very massive level…. when people talk – I posted this on my [Instagram] stories, this woman said, you need to be able to really articulate and know what your identity is, because otherwise you’re going to just get it from other people because everybody’s going to have an opinion.

‘And this is not a famous person who’s saying this. We’re all the same, regardless if we’re famous, not famous, whatever. We’re all flesh and blood.’

She continued: ‘I’m a recovering people pleaser. I want people to be pleased around me. I like people to feel warm and good and happy when they’re with me. 

But when people come and they say these things about me – “You talk funny”, “Why do you have so many kids?”, “You’re married to this guy who’s so much older” – I internalize it and think, “oh my god, is there something wrong with me?”‘

She also revealed that she’s now learning to reclaim her sense of self. 

Hilaria explained: ‘I haven’t been as clear as I should have been with myself about my identity. But that is the gift that I’m getting now. That’s the gift of the lemons that I’m turning into lemonade.

‘People can say this or that – I cannot stop them. But I can know myself in a way that hopefully it won’t give me that nauseous pit in my stomach that I’ve experienced so many times.’

As for her advice to other couples with significant age gaps, Hilaria said the key is recognizing differences without diminishing either partner.

‘I cannot expect him to be 41. He cannot expect me to be 67. But we can unite through our differences,’ she said. 

‘So many times I am ‘Alec Baldwin’s wife’, ‘and guest’. And look, in certain things, at a table, I don’t care. But when you’re in your home, that can’t be. I’m not a supporting character – I’m a main character.

‘I never set off to be in whatever life I’m living right now. And I’m the biggest cheerleader for him. We are husband and wife, mother and father. He’s Alec and I’m Hilaria.’