Is this Alec Baldwin? The man who just walked through the door with the gym bag slung over his broad shoulders is dressed in a gray Champion sweatshirt and jeans. With his cropped dirty-blond hair and ice-blue eyes, he looks more like a poster boy for the All- American football team than the breeding bad guy he's portrayed in films.

So it's understandable if you don't recognize him right away - even though he has been in some pretty big movies lately. But with two more films out this month, Working Girl and Talk Radio, the odds of your recognizing him are getting greater. Baldwin wouldn't mind that at all. "What I hate," he says in his deep, grainy voice, "is when people stop you and ask you to explain to them where they know you from."

So let us help: It could be from the day- time soap The Doctors, or from the night- time soap Knot's Landing, where for a season and a half he played demented preacher Joshua Rush. You may also recognize him as the deceased husband in Beetlejuice (but that was really Michael Keaton's movie) or as the hit-on hit man in Married to the Mob (but that was really Michelle Pfeiffer's movie).

It's not that Baldwin's longing to be part of the Hollywood scene. He gives the impression he'd rather discuss his thoughts on our political system or the environment (he can go on forever on either subject) than schmooze with studio execs. He actually left TV in 1986 and moved back to Manhattan because he couldn't bear to live in L.A. any longer. He took it a step further this fall when he moved into a three-bedroom house in isolated Amagansett, Long Island.

"I'm thirty," he explains. "When I was in my twenties, I felt frustrated if I wasn't where other people were. 'What am I missing?' Now it's just the opposite. I naturally move away from where every- one else is."

Baldwin has a lot of thoughts on the phoniness of the entertainment industry, and one of his two latest roles-as producer of a controversial radio show in Oliver Stone's Talk Radio - gave him a chance to express them. "What I really wanted to get across was how you never know whether people in the entertainment business are being genuine or not. Everyone's always got their arm around you, kissing you, telling you how much they love you. But when you don't make a hit for them, they hate you, or worse, they don't even think of you at all."

For now, Baldwin's taking calls from big-name directors like Stone, Jonathan Demme and Mike Nichols - though they usually consider him to play less-than- sterling characters (such as Melanie Griffith's cheating boyfriend in Working Girl), something Baldwin's becoming a little tired of. His idea of an ideal role? Bachelor Baldwin says he'd like to play a father. "I'd like to do something to emphasize the importance of being a parent. I think it's a lost art."