His duties as a film star aside, Alec Baldwin has made an effort to give something back to his theatre roots. In January he did a Love Letters benefit on Broadway, and he and actress-wife Kim Basinger hosted last summer's gala at the Bay Street Theatre in East Hampton, Long Island.

On April 16, Baldwin gets to make a more personal gesture. He'll be at New York University dedicating the new Elaine Aiken Theater (a high-tech film screening room) inside the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Film Center on 8th Street. Aiken, who died in 1998, was Baldwin's acting teacher and mentor.

Baldwin was in the midst of getting a degree when he left academia to pursue his acting career. He came to NYU in the early 1990s and finished his Bachelor of Fine Arts in undergraduate drama in the Tisch School of the Arts, representing the graduating class for the year 1994.

Theatre credits for the star of "Beetlejuice" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" include Prelude to a Kiss and Macbeth at the NY Shakespeare Festival in 1998.

The new Aiken Theatre will serve as both a screening room for student films and a lecture hall. -- By David Lefkowitz