Alec Baldwin Will "Never" Tweet Again: "I Really Learned a Lesson" at James Gandolfini's Funeral

Alec Baldwin Will "Never" Tweet Again: "I Really Learned a Lesson" at James Gandolfini's Funeral

In the wake of his latest failed attempt at anger management, Alec Baldwin has decided to take a cue from the late, great James Gandolfini.

Asked by Vanity Fair last night whether he'll ever tweet again, Baldwin replied, "Never. No."

"I went to Jimmy Gandolfini's funeral, and when I was there I realized Jimmy Gandolfini didn't have Twitter," the 30 Rock star said at the afterparty following a photography exhibit he curated at Gallery 151 in New York City. "Jimmy Gandolfini was so beloved as a person, and he was so admired as an actor, and he didn't give a f--k about social media."

Not to mention, Gandolfini's funeral was the event from which the whole scandal sprang that led to Baldwin quitting Twitter last week.

The consensus now is that Britain's Daily Mail errantly reported that Hilaria Baldwin tweeted an upbeat message about anniversary gifts (the couple just marked their first year of marriage) during the service at Manhattan's Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

But when the story first broke, Baldwin rushed to Hilaria's defense in a most verbally agressive fashion, slamming Mail reporter George Stark for getting the story wrong, calling him a "toxic little queen" and other slurs that later prompted the actor to rethink, delete and, ultimately, pull the plug altogether on his latest Twitter account, ABFoundation.

Baldwin didn't attribute his decision to ditch Twitter forever specifically to his latest war of words (which also led to him issuing an apology to GLAAD as well), however. 

"I really learned a lesson at the funeral," he told VF. "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. I stopped and said to myself, I'm going to try where I just don't do this anymore.

"I'm having a baby," Baldwin continued. "And everyone has seen how certain things have played out with my daughter, which as been very painful—it's been really unpleasant. That has consequences, and I do not want that to happen with my next child. I have one dream in my life 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."

So, the non-acting grass is once again looking greener to the thesp, who's on the big screen next in Woody Allen's latest film, Blue Jasmine.

"I'd love to [quit acting] if I could, yes," Baldwin said last night. "That would be the greatest thing in the world."

Reminded that his fans would hate such a thing, he reiterated, "No, I would love to. If I could find something else to do."

Well, he has a podcast and other cultural-man-about-town pursuits, so...maybe he doesn't mind his day job so much after all. (And we've heard the good-riddance-to-Twitter stuff before, too.)