Because Alec Baldwin made his name as a leading man in "The Hunt for Red October" and flaunted his acting chops early on in "Glengarry, Glen Ross," it's easy to forget that his first big film role was a silly scaredy-cat in "Beetlejuice."

Baldwin shows off his comedic chops in "The Departed," playing the role of funny man while maintaining a convincing toughness for his cop character.

In recent years, Baldwin has earned an Oscar nod for his role in "The Cooler," hammed it up in movies such as "Along Came Polly" and hosted Saturday Night Live a dozen times. He's the anti-Jim Carrey; the "In Living Color" alum made his name in sketch comedy and starred in a half-dozen comedies before the first of many serious roles.

Baldwin, of course, was the prototypical leading man in 1994's "The Getaway" and "The Shadow." But as the years, the puffiness and the SNL hosting gigs accumulated (he's tied with John Goodman for second-most all time), something important happened in his acting career: he quit taking himself seriously.

Frequently, his newer characters poke fun at those aggressive, overwrought performances of the early '90s. But Baldwin hasn't completely mortgaged his image as a serious actor for a shot at goofball notoriety. Rather, he flip-flops between serious and comedic roles, appearing in 2003's "The Cooler" before "The Cat in the Hat" the same year. The next year, he did "Polly" and the "Aviator."

The role of Captain Ellerby in "The Departed" couldn't be more well suited to Baldwin's mix of skills. Again, he's the boss -- a tough-as-nails investigator who leads the Massachusetts State Police Department's elite Special Investigations Unit. We hear echoes of his "Glengarry" performance during tense briefings of his staff.

But Baldwin has also been charged with breaking the tension, delivering gut-busting one-liners that are more memorable than those of his co-star Jack Nicholson. After he establishes a commanding presence in an early briefing, he advises his subordinates to write down their leads "so I can take credit for them." During a stakeout, he elicits laughs by grabbing a technician in a headlock and screaming "The Patriot Act, I love it." But five minutes later, he's punching out an investigator whom he thinks botched the job.

As such, Ellerby is the perfect microcosm for Alec Baldwin's career in 2006. He wouldn't belong in the tension-packed drama without the skill to be serious, but he also wouldn't be able to make the one-liners funny without the timing honed in dozens of SNL sketches.

With such a potent combination, Baldwin can't help but steal most of the scenes he's in. He proves more agile than leads Matt Damon or Leonardo DiCaprio and more quotable than Nicholson. The perfect combination of sweet and sour.

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asap reporter Jonathan Drew is based in New York.

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