Does Alec Baldwin need damage control or anger management?

Alec Baldwin is not the baddest of Hollywood’s bad boys. Not unlike Jack Donaghy, the character he played on “30 Rock,” Baldwin comes across as a self-involved cad, yet likable in a goofball sort of way.

The latest in the actor’s long line of hot-tempered, headline-grabbing episodes came in response to a report in the Daily Mail that his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, had been callously sending out tweets during James Gandolfini’s funeral. Baldwin shot off one of his own tweets, calling the offending reporter “a toxic little queen.” That remark, plus a bravado-tinged threat of homoerotic physical violence, got him in trouble with gay-rights groups.

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Baldwin quickly issued an apology, noting his past support for gay causes, and offered an explanation of the “queen” comment. The word queen, he said, “doesn’t have any necessarily sexual connotations. I know women that act queeny, I know men that are straight that act queeny, and I know gay men that act queeny. It doesn’t have to be a definite sexual connotation, or a homophobic connotation.”

Baldwin has shut down his Twitter account, pledging to never tweet again. Of course, he said the same thing twice before -- the first time after he got in a heated dispute with American Airlines flight attendants who tried to make him stop playing Words With Friends on his cellphone.

In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Baldwin said, “I went to Jimmy Gandolfini’s funeral, and when I was there I realized Jimmy Gandolfini didn’t have Twitter. Jimmy Gandolfini was so beloved as a person, and he was so admired as an actor, and he didn’t [care] about social media. I really learned a lesson at the funeral. I said to myself, ‘This is all a waste of time.’ Meaning it’s fun sometimes, but less and less and less. It’s just another chink in your armor for people to come and kill you.”

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Claiming to be weary of it all, Baldwin told the magazine he would also happily retire from acting so that he could raise the child he is having with Hilaria out of the spotlight.

“I have one dream in my life,” Baldwin said, “and that is that this daughter I’m having — she comes to me about seven or eight years from now, she has a friend, and she’s at her house and she says, ‘Daddy, Susie’s mom says you used to be on TV. Daddy, is that true?’ She has no knowledge of me as a public person. That would be heaven for me.”

Alec Baldwin quit acting? Now, that would be something to tweet about.

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