Alec Baldwin to Co-Host TCM's The Essentials

For the ninth year of its series The Essentials, Turner Classic Movies has tapped one of my favorite actors - funny, versatile, resiliient Alec Baldwin - to co-host with Robert Osborne, fresh from his Emmy win for 30 Rock.

For a man who could have gotten by on his looks alone, Baldwin has delivered big-screen performances that range from terrifyingly cold to side-splittingly funny. He's been one of the most durable and successful guest hosts of Saturday Night Live, perennially dueling with comic genius Steve Martin for the title of Most Frequent SNL Host.

He starts with the TCM series in March, following in the footsteps of Rose McGowan, Carrie Fisher, Sydney Pollack and Rob Reiner. The folks at TCM wanted to work with him again after he served as the interviewer in their special on Gene Wilder.

Full disclosure: Baldwin served on the board of an organization I once worked for, but I thought he was a great actor long before that. (And just so you know, he was always completely professional and gracious - something I can't say of every movie star I've met!)

Baldwin and a stuntman on the set of '30 Rock'/by Bryan Bedder, Getty Images