Kim Basinger Couldn't Leave Her House For Years, And There Was A Grim Explanation

Over the years, Basinger’s been remarkably open with journalists. For instance, when she was asked by Elle magazine about women’s roles in Hollywood, she responded, “If you really look at it, men are kept as the sacred ones and touted the older they get. It’s always been the old adage that women are put out to pasture the older they get. But I think it’s changing somewhat.”

Basinger also once told Vanity Fair, “This business is so fickle. I know what it feels like to be on the absolute bottom — emotionally, spiritually, professionally — to be absolutely naked down there and then to get up and start rising, one step at a time. I’ve learned a lot of things the hard way.” We’re sure Hollywood wasn’t too fond of either of these quotes.

Beyond her career, though, Basinger’s also been candid about the role her upbringing may have played in the mental health issues she’s faced throughout her life. For instance, she said to Vanity Fair, “Parents can be very influential in designing those little creepy-crawlers that jump around in your mind for the rest of your life.” Are these the same “creepy-crawlers” that left her housebound at one point?

The extraordinarily beautiful Basinger began her career as a model before switching to acting in the late 1970s. After bagging some TV roles, she made her big-screen debut in the 1981 western drama Hard Country. Basinger then shot to fame only two years later when she starred in Never Say Never Again, playing Bond girl Domino Petachi.

Basinger was then nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in 1984’s The Natural opposite Hollywood legend Robert Redford. In 9½ Weeks, an erotic drama co-starring Mickey Rourke, she further cemented her star status. And next came the biggest role of her career in 1989 when she played reporter Vicki Vale in Batman — the fifth-biggest movie of all time at that point.

Over the next couple of decades, Basinger would have a number of highs and lows in her acting career. She took home an Oscar for 1997’s L.A. Confidential and won plaudits for her role in 2002’s semi-autobiographical 8 Mile, starring the rapper Eminem. Despite this, though, she was often dismissed by critics and endured as many failures as hits at the box office.

Regardless of her on-screen fortunes during this uneven period, Basinger was still half of one of Hollywood’s biggest power couples, so she always stayed in the spotlight. She met Alec Baldwin on the set of the 1990 movie The Marrying Man — and wound up marrying him in real life in 1993! Their daughter Ireland came along in 1995 but the couple had split by 2000 and were divorced two years later.

The divorce and its aftermath were long, drawn out, and nasty, with the custody battle over Ireland providing tabloid fodder for years. At one point, Baldwin was stopped from seeing his daughter altogether when a vitriolic voice message he left the 11-year-old was released to the public. It was a tumultuous time for the notoriously publicity-shy Basinger.

In truth, Basinger’s always been something of a contradiction. She married Baldwin, one of Hollywood’s premier leading men, and even reportedly had a relationship with Prince at the height of his fame. Basinger also played sultry sirens in some of the biggest movies of their eras and even posed for Playboy.

Yet despite these things — seemingly the actions of someone who enjoys being the center of attention — it’s always been known that Basinger’s painfully shy. In fact, L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson told Vanity Fair in 2000, “Most actors crave the spotlight; they love the attention. Kim is extremely uncomfortable in the spotlight. She genuinely hates it.”

As for her status as a sex symbol, Basinger claims that’s simply another performance. “I don’t consider myself sexy,” she admitted to Vanity Fair. “I have to act to be sexy. I’m not very good at being a ‘girl,’ for the type of man who loves that kind of thing. I’m a clean person. I’ll put on a little makeup but I’m basically not a very feminine girl.”

Indeed, in trying to work out the mystery that is Basinger, Baldwin observed to Vanity Fair, “There’s this innocent foundation that’s always linked to passion: ‘I loved it when my mother made me dresses, so I’m going to make my own dress for the Oscars.’ ‘I love music, so I’m going to date Prince.’ It’s completely fuelled by emotion. Kim is an extraordinarily instinctual person.”

Speaking of instinct, over the past few decades, Basinger’s had only one that drives her: the instinct to be a great mom. In 2013 she spoke with People magazine about Ireland and revealed, “She grew up in the limelight but I tried to provide stability and a quieter world.” And regarding her daughter’s move into modeling, Basinger said, “I think she wanted to stick her foot in and see what it would bring.”

In 2015 Basinger spoke to Elle magazine about motherhood and her close relationship with her daughter. She revealed, “Ireland and I have gone through many challenges. I’m a single mom, so we were joined at the hip. We went through a lot of hard times. She’s had her challenges and her struggles with relationships.”

“I always tried to be sincere in sending messages to her that she could do anything in the world,” the proud mom continued. “I’ve always told her, ‘Stand up for what you believe in. Even when the crowd won’t speak, stand up anyway and speak with your heart. Your heart will never lead you wrong.’ I see her getting there.”

During 2016 Basinger addressed her divorce with Net-A-Porter’s The Edit magazine. To her, as upsetting and ugly as the experience had been, it was at least in the past. She said she and Baldwin were “cool now” and added that “life goes on.” She didn’t dwell on her relationship with her ex, though, preferring instead to focus on how the separation affected Ireland.

“Divorce is hard on a kid, no matter how you cut it,” Basinger admitted. “And ours was very public and nasty. So, I brought up Ireland in a very unconventional way. I just wanted her to be free.” What did this freedom entail, though? Well, the superstar actress was only too happy to explain her unusual parenting philosophy.

Basinger explained, “If she wanted to have her friends over and write over the walls with a pen, that was fine. I wanted her childhood to be full of love and light and animals and friends.” To her credit, this unconventional approach seems to have paid dividends. After all, Basinger and Ireland still live close to each other in Southern California — with an army of 13 dogs between them!

This brings us to April 2022 and Basinger’s appearance on Red Table Talk alongside Ireland. This became Basinger’s forum to reveal all about her mental health struggles, including a debilitating battle with agoraphobia. She said it first developed one day in the most mundane of places: her local health food shop.

“It was my neighborhood store,” explained Basinger. “I was going down aisle number three. My basket was almost full and I found something really overcoming me in such a way that I couldn’t breathe. So, I left the basket and I made it to my car. And that was the last time I drove for almost six, seven months.”

Sadly, the crippling anxiety became so severe that the superstar actress was confined to her home. Basinger confessed, “I wouldn’t leave the house. I would no longer go to dinner. I could not even have people for dinner. We tried that.” During this awful period Basinger felt that, despite her best efforts, her condition truly overcame her.

“It’s really horrible to feel that it won as really fiercely as [it] did during those years, you know, and not know what it was,” Basinger added. “It’s like something just completely shuts down within you and you have to relearn everything.” This process of relearning even included simple tasks that she’d previously had no problem with.

“I had to relearn to drive,” explained Basinger. “And for many years I would not go through the tunnels in Malibu. Everything used to make me nervous, like the glass [sliding] to open the door or ‘Where do I step to open the door?’ Everything became a big job to figure out how to do it.”

On top of the mental symptoms Basinger was feeling, she also suffered some physical responses to her anxiety. She revealed, “You live with a dry mouth all the time, you’re very shaky, you’re just so exhausted all the time.” It all led her to attend a treatment facility for half a year.

Unfortunately, at the time Basinger didn’t feel like she could be honest about her problems because there was too much of a stigma surrounding mental health. In particular, she believed that informing people in Hollywood would’ve been a mistake. She admitted, “I was really scared because I didn’t want to tell anybody in my work what was happening.”

Interestingly, Basinger also addressed similar issues as part of an HBO documentary called Panic way back in 1999. She explained, “There’s a fear of fear — fear that fear will come… I remember how lonely I felt and how in need of help I was. And for a length of time I couldn’t find it.”

It was only after her health food store panic attack that she managed to find the help she needed from the remarkably named Dr. Ronald Doctor. Of the clinical psychologist, she said, “Dr. Doctor — he gave me a new start in this life. I even had to learn how to drive again. It was quite a process; I’ll tell you that.”

Fast-forward to 2013, though, and Basinger was in a much better place with her anxieties. In fact, she told People magazine that she wasn’t even using medication anymore. “Now I wake up and enjoy life,” she revealed. “I didn’t want to live on drugs. I wanted to face everything I was afraid of.”

In truth, these struggles as an adult weren’t the first time Basinger had dealt with mental health issues. She told Red Table Talk that she remembers her mom suffering from anxiety and, as a kid, Basinger worried that it’d be passed down to her. And she confessed to sometimes telling her school lies in order to go back home so she could look after her mother.

“That started affecting me in so many ways that I felt like I had to be home with my mom to save her,” the star explained. Her school soon recognized that something may have been having an impact on young Kim. In fact, she was so introverted as a child that she was checked for autism — but instead it was discovered that she did have anxiety like her mom.

Basinger described how her symptoms would manifest in Panic. She vividly detailed a time in Fourth Grade when she was asked a question by her teacher. She explained, “It’s very quiet and kids are raising their hands. But the teacher called on me.” Cue a sense of all-consuming dread.

“I stood up and I was shaking, and my mouth wouldn’t move, and everybody stared at me, and I thought I was going to faint,” Basinger continued. “I ran out of the classroom. It was horrible… As a child, I was very shy. Painfully, excruciatingly shy. I hid a lot in my room.”

Basinger added that her mother then asked the teacher not to call on her again. She now thinks that her mom inadvertently made the problem worse, though. The actress told Vanity Fair, “She was a mother tiger; she thought she was protecting me, whereas in reality I needed help. That was a sign of something that was definitely wrong.”

As a consequence, this fear of standing up in front of a crowd continued to affect Basinger well into her adult life. “It will never be an easy task for me to get up in front of the public,” she admitted in the doc. “I think I’m getting better but it’s an inch-by-inch process. Not even a whole inch!”

Unfortunately, this crippling anxiety even manifested itself during what should’ve been the crowning moment of Basinger’s acting career. At the Oscars in 1998, she picked up the Best Supporting Actress trophy in recognition of her stunning turn in L.A. Confidential. But when she made it up on that stage for her acceptance speech, she felt that old familiar fear.

“I was just absolutely scared to death,” Basinger confessed in Panic. “And I knew that the next year, I had to hand the award out to the next winner. I don’t know if I was more elated over winning or more in pain over knowing that I had to come back!”

Sadly, Ireland would prove to be the third generation in the family to suffer from severe anxiety. On Red Table Talk, Ireland admitted, “I think I’ve had it my whole life, since I was a kid. I just don’t think I was comfortable calling it what it was. I just felt so ashamed of it. And I didn’t understand what was happening to me.”

As an adult, Ireland fell into alcohol and narcotics addictions, all while battling an eating disorder. She confessed to avoiding speaking with her mom and dad for a long period before she was rescued by an unlikely source. When her cousin Alaia visited her in LA, she immediately recognized that Ireland was in a bad way.

“She saved my life,” Ireland stated emphatically, before confessing just how low she’d felt. “I think I would have committed suicide, or I would have been dead. I was so close. Like, I was so close I could feel it getting to that point. And she saved my life. She pulled me out of it.”