Alec Baldwin has gone from being a busboy at Studio 54 to an award winning star who, right now, is probably having his tuxedo pressed before he take to the stage to host tonight's 82nd Academy Award ceremony. The goal of finally winning an Oscar is surely on the back burner now, but Baldwin has experienced that rare thing in Hollywood of finding one's true career foothold later in life. At 51, Baldwin is a bigger star than ever, endearing himself to critics, audiences, nerds, the everyman and intellectuals. But it hasn't been easy, and it still isn't.

Born in New York, Alec was the first of the Baldwin brothers to enter the world of acting (William, Daniel and Stephen followed.) His filmography is rather exhausting, with highlights including Beetlejuice, The Hunt for Red October, Glengarry Glenross, Pearl Harbor, Cats and Dogs, The Cooler, The Aviator and The Departed.

But it is television that has brought him his most recent awards, and the most accolades since he recieved an Academy Award nomination for The Cooler. His longest stint in any one series before 30 Rock was in a bunch of episodes of Will and Grace, but it is his portrayal as the sharp and interfering network executive on Tina Fey's exquisite comedy that has brought him the affection that his solid film career never did. And for it he has won Screen Actors Guild Awards four years in a row, as well as Golden Globes and Emmys.

Articulate, cutting and risque, calling Baldwin 'outspoken' is an understatement in the manner of calling Victoria Beckham a little on the slim side. But unlike most 'outspoken' celebrities, where the word 'outspoken' is often a euphamism for 'screaming nonsensical attention-grabbing crazy', Baldwin's is more politically focused. He was a relentless critic of the Bush administration and all of its trimmings, especially Dick Cheney, who he once branded a terrorist in a column for the Huffington Post. He equated the 2000 US presidential election with 9/11, saying that the impact the goings on of George W Bush, hanging chads and supreme court judges had on American democracy was similar to the impact the attacks on the Twin Towers had on commerce in New York. Also deeply concerned about animal rights, his activism in that area has brought collaboration with the often daft PETA organisation.

Such shooting of one's mouth off doesn't usually wash with the insanely shiny PR gloss over most actors these days, but Baldwin somehow gets away with it, trading on a mixture of 'been around the block' experience, intelligence, and verbal wrecklessness. However, he is still banned from entering the Philippines after cracking a joke on a talk show last year about having more children via a mail order Filipino bride.

His sharpness is also a result of the ongoing trauma he is suffering from his divorce and separation from his daughter, something he brands 'par­ental alienation syndrome'.

Baldwin met his future wife Kim Basinger on the set of The Marrying Man in 1990. He did indeed become the marrying man three years later, and their daughter was born in '95. After their divorce in 2001, the former couple became locked in a highly contentious and very public custody battle.

While Bassinger cites Baldwin's temper as one of the reasons the marriage failed, Baldwin himself has been extremely levelheaded in the consistency of his open criticism about his wife and her legal team, so much so, that in 2008, he documented it all in the book A Promise To Ourselves, a chronicle of how he was trying to maintain the relationship between him and his daughter, and the roadblocks that were affecting it.

Baldwin claims that Bassinger has spent $1.5m on keeping him out of his daughter's life, while he has spent $1m trying to stay in it. The argument reached breaking point when he left an extremely irate voicemail after an arranged phonecall to his daughter went unanswered. The voice message was subsequently sold to celebrity gossip website TMZ, an incident that Baldwin subsequently admitted in an interview with Playboy magazine nearly drove him to suicide.

Steve Martin will co-host the Oscars with Baldwin, and it marks a certain peak in the latter's career, a recognition of sorts that he is of the establishment, but also smart and capable enough to be in charge of it for a night, and that although he has made it big, for the time being at least he's still the host, and not the birthday boy.

Hero or villain? Alec Baldwin

High: His turn as Jack Donaghy on the sitcom 30 Rock which has earned him a clutch of awards.

Low: His ongoing struggle for more visitation rights to his daughter.