Whenever Paramount's latest, oft-delayed Jack Ryan reboot finally gets off the ground, Chris Pine will be the fourth actor to portray Tom Clancy's famed CIA analyst character. But had history gone differently, that might not have been the case. Potentially, The Hunt For Red October's Jack Ryan, Alec Baldwin, could have aged with the role and eventually become President Ryan, following the trajectory of Clancy's books. Now, Baldwin reveals why that didn't happen for the first time on The Huffington Post (via Dark Horizons)—weirdly, in the form of career advice for Charlie Sheen. I remember reading in an article in Premiere Magazine back in 1991 that newly-minted star Baldwin was getting notions beyond his station and demanding "Harrison Ford money," and that Paramount figured if they were going to shell out Harrison Ford money, they might as well get Harrison Ford. (Remember, Ford was the biggest box office draw in the world back then.) Apparently there was really a lot more to the story than that, involving, in Baldwin's words, "the biggest, lyingest, thievingest scumbags on Earth." The actor provides an insightful and well-written account of those events from his point of view in this article. For Ryan fans, it's worth a read.
