Personal life

Basinger married makeup artist Ron Snyder-Britton in 1980. They met on the film Hard Country, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1988. He would later write a memoir titled Longer than Forever, published in 1998, about their time together and about her rumored affair with actor Richard Gere, with whom she starred in No Mercy (1986) and Final Analysis (1992).She later had a relationship with Prince, for less than a year. She met her second husband, actor Alec Baldwin, when both played romantic lovers in the 1991 flop, The Marrying Man. They married on August 19, 1993 and appeared in another flop, the remake of The Getaway (1994). They also played themselves in an 1998 episode of The Simpsons (which also includes Ron Howard), where Basinger corrects Homer Simpson on the pronunciation of her last name and also polishes her Oscar statuette. They have a daughter, Ireland Eliesse "Addie" Baldwin (born October 23, 1995). The couple separated in 2000 and divorced in February 2002. Since then, Basinger and Baldwin have been locked in a contentious public custody battle.

Basinger suffers from agoraphobia, which she blames on discomfort early in her Hollywood career from people "ogling" her when was required to appear in bikinis. She said she was in "misery because people were looking at [her]" and that she would go "home and play piano and scream at night to let out... frustrations."

Some of her family members recommended that Basinger buy the small town of Braselton, Georgia in 1989 for $20 million, with the hopes of establishing the town as a tourist attraction with movie studios and a film festival, but she met financial difficulties and sold it in 1993. The town is now owned by developer Wayne Mason. In a 1998 interview with Barbara Walters, Basinger admitted that "nothing good came out of it," because a rift resulted within her family. Her financial difficulties were exacerbated when she pulled out of the controversial film Boxing Helena, resulting in the studio suing and winning an $8-million judgment against her at after a trial. Basinger filed for bankruptcy and also appealed the jury's decision to a higher court, which sided with her. Eventually, she and the studio settled for a lesser amount.