Everywhere Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin go, it seems, their tabloid reputation precedes them. Aren't they the ones who created so much trouble on the set of The Marrying Man that the studio tried to get them blacklisted from the film business? Isn't she the one who bought a small town in Georgia hoping to turn it into a showplace, then never pulled it off? Didn't she declare bankruptcy after she was sued for backing out of the movie Boxing Helena? Isn't he so hot-tempered he brawls with the paparazzi?

Yes, all these rumors exist. But during a recent interview at a Beverly Hills hotel, I realized that Kim and Alec, now married nearly three years, have gotten a had rap.

They arrived on time, both dressed down in nondescript shades of gray, brown, and black. Kim, last seen on-screen with Alec in The Getaway, is startlingly beautiful at 42. She wore no makeup beyond a dash of lipstick. Alec, 38-year-old star of The Juror and the upcoming Heaven's Prisoners, needed a shave, hut he says he always needs a shave. They seemed genuinely grateful for a pro ordered room-service lunch.

Now that these two high-profile actors are brand-new parents, their lives seem to he defined by their 6-month-old baby girl, Ireland Eliesse Baldwin. Though she was safe at home with her nanny, little Addie, as they call her, hovered over our talk like a benign cupid.

LS: You two look very happy. Is it Baby Addie?

KB: Absolutely!

LS: Have things changed a lot since she was born?

KB: This is the first time for us both, so we've been learning the basics: how to wash her, how to feed her. We were a bit fuzzy at first. And of course, I worry about her. So I have little emotional outbursts now and then-more than usual.

AB: My sister has six kids. My brother has two, and my other brother has a baby. I'm not great at this, but I'm better at seeing what the really important things are now. Last night, 1 was talking on the phone, and Kim brought the baby in. I said, "I'll call you right back." I just had to get off the phone and play with Addie.

LS: So you have new priorities?

AB: Better ones than before.

LS: Having been the playboy of the Western world, you had to settle down sometime!

AB: That's pitiful to me now. When people ask what it's like being a father, I say it's hard to leave home. I don't want to go out of my house. I see that Jim Carrey gets $20 million to make a movie. If I got $20 million, I'd do one movie and quit. How much money do you need? I'd take the $20 million and go home.

LS: You're both independent-minded about the movie business. Kim, have you thought about working again?

KB: I'm an actress and I really love that. I'd also like to go back to school and finish my college degree. But I have a baby, and I look at her and say, "Listen Addie, I'm going to have to leave you." The thought of her permeates me all the time, in meetings, when I'm driving, at dinner. There's no time when I'm not thinking about her. I hunger for this acting life and for my private life. I want to do it all, and I get very anxious about the choices.

LS: Has the baby affected the intimacy of your marriage?

KB: [both laugh] Definitely!

AB: Anyone who says it doesn't is a liar. Someone told Kim that it's appropriate in the first few months to turn all your attention to the baby.

KB: And that the first year is about giving the baby everything. Surround her with love the first year. We're trying to do that with Addie. Babies really want your love, and they want to know the setup. You know, "Who are these guys I've gotten for parents? Who are they?"

AB: But we're going to have another one. Kim is going to work this year and after that's over, we'll try again.

LS: Did you have a hard time getting pregnant?

KB: One of the tabloids said that Alec went to several fertility clinics. He never did. At first, I may not have gotten pregnant because we just weren't together at the right time.

LS: You weren't taking fertility drugs?

KB: We didn't do a thing, didn't go to clinics....

AB: I never took a fertility test.

KB: We didn't even discuss that. We just wanted it to happen. And if it didn't, it didn't. We had spoken many times about adopting children.

AB: The adoption idea was more out of compassion. Even now, after Addie, we still think about adopting.

LS: Tell me about the papaya.

KB: I read that native women eat papaya as their birth control.

AB: Yeah, she said, "Don't eat papaya." And I love papaya!

KB: Don't wear tight underpants. I read that too.

AB: Well, I'm here to say that I ate papaya, took hot showers, wore tight underwear, and we still had a baby. That's how much of a man I am [laughs].

LS: Kirn, was it difficult recovering from the cesarean?

KB: The baby was in the birth canal for four and a half months, and then all of a sudden in the last month she turned to breech. We went in on the due date and the doctor said he wanted to try turning her because she was getting very big. And they tried for 45 minutes. Knowing her now I could have told them she'd say, "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to move an inch." But she actually did move, and then, as soon as the doctor left, she went back to breech. I said, "I'm not leaving this hospital today without this baby. So let's do it."

LS: You speak of the baby's personality. Do you feel that at this age she has a definite personality?

KB: Oh gosh, does she ever!

AB: She is very playful, and she smiles. To watch her look at Kim is my great joy. Because there's no one she responds to like Kim. She's also getting very flirty, very coy... she plays games.

LS: Is she pretty?

AB: Oh! Oh! KB: The daddy.

LS: Daddy loves her.

AB: She's perfect.

LS: When the baby was only 3 days old and you were bringing her home from the hospital, a photographer tried to videotape you outside your house. It turned into an unfortunate confrontation, and the paparazzo claims you hit him. How does having the baby make you feel about privacy now?

KB: I've always wanted a lot of land to live on. I'm a country girl, and I've never gotten used to lots of people around me. I love California, but we feel like prey here.

AB: There's a difference between being in legitimate forums where press and photographers are supposed to be, and being stalked. We make ourselves available, and we go to places where we're going to encounter the press. We're as nice as can be and we do what people expect. But with this guy coming after the baby.... Just think about it: He was waiting for us in front of our house. He was not wearing any press credentials. The guy came over. He was very odd-looking, and he continued to insist on photographing us, even after I said very nicely, "Don't do it." I went to push the camera out of his hand, and I inadvertently hit him in the face. He says I punched him. Now he's suing me.

KB: But there was a real funny side to the incident too. I was in the car with the baby, and I couldn't get out of the door. Alec went through the gate, into the house, and came back out with some shaving cream. If you wanted to do harm to someone, you wouldn't think to go in your bathroom—

AB: —I wasn't going to shave him.

KB: I said, "Where are you going with the shaving cream?"

LS: Alec was just going to put it on the lens?

KB: That's it.

LS: You've said that you would arrange to be photographed with the baby at the right time and place. But you didn't want to do it with somebody who comes up on the street.

AB: We wanted to get used to having the baby first. She was only 3 days old!

KB: We were in New York in front of a hotel one day and someone started snapping pictures. Addie is very frightened of flashbulbs, and she's very jumpy. I don't want to put her through that now. Babies' fears when they're small are of falling and of loud noises. So the less ruckus the better for her. I want her to have a really peaceful existence.

LS: Alec, do you think you have a highly protective nature or is it just your combative side coming out when you react to the paparazzi?

AB: It's not me I'm worried about. It's Kim. I want to protect her. But there's another thing: We flew into New York the other day, and a photographer from a TV tabloid show came up to us. He said that my bodyguard roughed him up. This guy obviously came to the airport to get something going that didn't happen, and he was so disappointed. He was utterly shattered, it seemed, that nobody punched him.

LS: So they really try to provoke you?

KB: Absolutely.

LS: Kim, you don't seem to care about your fame. Do you enjoy any part of it? I know that a couple of bad things have happened to you.

KB: Honey, I've had more than a couple. But Alec is so emotional and reactive that the bad things that have happened to me have been more painful for him.

LS: He's hotheaded.

KB: And I'm really shy. When I make a movie and go to the premiere, I see that red carpet and get out of the car; they stick a mike in my face, and I'm terrified. He's much better at it. I'll say, "We're not stopping. We're not stopping. Don't stop."

AB: And I'll make her stop.

KB: It's not that I don't want to talk to the press. It's just that it's like being in a beauty contest, and I'm going through an anxiety attack.

AB: They'll shove a microphone in her face and say, "So tell us, Kim, whaddya think? Is Michael Jackson a child molester? Should Madonna be doing Evita?"

KB: Some people play it up well. I can't. But to answer your question about fame, it comes with the job. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Basically, it angers me to hear actors say, "Oh, I just can't be bothered."

LS: There's almost a legend surrounding you as a couple.

AB: We've been through a lot of negattive things. Now I just want us to stay together with our daughter, and feel that all of those things are behind us. Though I've learned that they're behind you when you decide you want them to be behind you.

LS: It seems that since getting married, you have become more centered, you know who you are. But trouble still dogs you.

AB: I think one of the reasons we've had some unusually tough times is that we have tried to live a normal life. We've never retreated behind the velvet curtain, where it's all limos and body-guards. We've tried to walk down the streets and live like normal people and drive our own cars and live in places where people told us we shouldn't—like our tract house in the Valley, which is constantly described as our "mansion." We go to restaurants where ordinary people go. Some celebrities try to do what we've done, realize they can't, and give up. Then they retreat. And they live 90210 among their own kind. We've stayed together, and we had a baby. I hope people look at us and say, "Well, they're not just two crazy Hollywood people!" But when I read some of the things that are written about us, I stand amazed.

KB: Tell that story about the wieners, on Long Island, when we were at a fund-raiser.

AB: Oh yes. Kim was pregnant at the time, and afterward this TV reporter said, "Sources tell me that Kim Basinger was shoveling the pigs-in-a-blanket into her mouth. A noted vegetarian— and she couldn't get enough of these hot dogs. And Alec Baldwin had to stop her..."

KB: "...had to come rescue her and say, 'Kim, Kim!...'"

AB: "'What are you doing? You're having a meat flashback!'" And this reporter just made it all up!

KB: Well, we laughed so much about it. But I got letters from people who know me for my work with animal rights groups. They believed I had eaten a hot dog! I don't eat meat—even though my mother was a great Southern cook. But this reporter went on TV and said I couldn't stop eating wieners.

AB: Say it ain't so, Kim. Say you didn't eat a hot dog. But, despite all this hoopla, we've never given up the belief that we can live like ordinary people.

Editor's note: A few weeks after this interview, Kim and Alec suffered another appalling invasion of privacy. At their NY country house, a photographer shot through the window of the room where Kim was holding the baby. His pictures of Addie, looking wide-eyed over her mother's shoulder, became a tabloid "exclusive."