Alec Baldwin has had a long and interesting road since the infamous voicemail scandal with his then 11-year-old daughter Ireland. He’s long been a vocal advocate for father’s rights in the divorce system, and it was pretty clear he had reached his breaking point long before that call. Baldwin recently published a book called “A Promise to Ourselves,” talking about his divorce from ex-wife Kim Basinger and the frustrating struggle to maintain a relationship with his daughter Ireland.

Baldwin goes off on the tabloid media, specifically attacking TMZ, who he clearly still holds a significant grudge against. He said he was so depressed after the voicemail scandal that he was deeply suicidal for three weeks.

Baldwin had been trying to reach his daughter, then 11, but “she was off for spring break with her mother and her phone was turned off for 10 consecutive days … This had gone on for years now and … when the beep came, I snapped. [Harvey Levin, TMZ’s editor] seemed to be that breed of tabloid creature that realized an almost sexual level of pleasure from ruining other people’s lives.”

“He has created TMZ as the updated receptacle of … trash,” Baldwin writes. “He leads a cadre of self-satisfied twentysomethings who jump like rats from public relations sinking ship to sinking ship.” The release of the tape caused Baldwin to become suicidal, as he and the agoraphobic actress had been fighting in court over their daughter for six years.

“Driving up the Taconic Parkway, heading to an inn in the Berkshire Mountains, I began to think about what little town I would repair to in order to commit suicide. What semi-remote Massachusetts state park could I hike deep into and overdose there? When I returned to New York, the thought of jumping out the window of my apartment was with me every night for weeks.”

Thinking of Ireland, he resisted, thankfully. “I love my daughter with all my heart,” he writes

[From the Daily News]

I think Alec can often come off as self-indulgent when he talks about personal matters, but it’s hard not to feel empathy for him. If anything it seems like he feels a lot more for his daughter than a lot of dad’s, and has an extra level of sadness and frustration over not getting to be in her life the way he’d like to. He’s said that since his divorce he feels more like an uncle to Ireland than a dad. If you love your kid with all your heart, I can see how that could create a particular deep kind of ache.

I can’t blame him for being upset with TMZ. Baldwin clearly knows he’s responsible for his actions, but it must be frustrating to know that there are so many people following you around, just waiting for you to mess up. However his temper is pretty legendary, and at the end of the day it’d probably do him more good to let go of as many of his old grudges as possible. He’ll be less likely to explode, and it can only help his other relationships.

Here’s Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey (header with Judah Friedlander) at the Peabody Awards in New York City in June. Images thanks to PR Photos.