Award-winning American actor Alec Baldwin, who has played all kinds of heroes and villains on stage and screen, says he may be ready to take on a new role - that of real-life politician.

Baldwin told 60 Minutes television news program in a segment to be aired in the US on Sunday that he is thinking about pursuing his longtime dream of becoming an elected official, CBS said on Thursday.

"There's other things I want to do (besides acting). I mean, in a matter of weeks, I'm going to be 50," Baldwin said. "There's no age limit on running for office, to a degree. (It is) something I might do one day."

The interview took place before he turned 50 on April 3.

The New York resident is known for political activism. In 2006 he told The New York Times that if he were a public official, he might like to be governor of his home state.

Baldwin told 60 Minutes he would be ready to face the public and the press, in part because of the scrutiny that accompanied his divorce and custody battle with actress Kim Basinger.

In April 2007 a voicemail by Baldwin to his daughter in which he called her a "thoughtless little pig" was widely reported in newspapers, magazines and on television.

"If you go through the things I have gone through with the media like this thing with my daughter, there's only one thing that comes to mind initially - that is how my daughter must have felt to have this played out in public," Baldwin said.

Still, he seemed no less outspoken now than he was before his divorce. He had earlier called his ex-wife's lawyer a "300-pound homunculus with a face like a clenched fist."

"I was being kind," Baldwin told interviewer Morley Safer.