As speculation continues to swirl over Sarah Palin’s presidential ambitions, the equally colourful and controversial co-star from her Saturday Night Live appearance has announced he too may seek public office – from the other side of the political spectrum.

Alec Baldwin, the outspoken and famously ultra-liberal Hollywood star mercilessly sent in the puppet satire Team America, has been rehabilitated from the showbiz dead by his scene-stealing role in US television show 30 Rock and has now put word out that he is seeking a seat to run for Congress in 2012.

Baldwin, whose political entanglements include blogging for the Huffington Post and repeatedly tangling with Fox News attack-dog Bill Reilly, told Playboy magazine that he was looking for an opportunity to run when his 30 Rock contract ends in 2012.

“The desire is there, that’s one component,” he told the magazine. “The other component is opportunity.”

Baldwin has already ruled out offers to run as a governor in Ohio or California. “But I would have to live in California. And who wants to live in California?” he asked.

Asked if he would be qualified for such a race in any case, he quipped: “That's what I hate about Arnold Schwarzenegger. His only credentials are that he ran a fitness programme under some bygone president... I'm [Alexis] de Tocqueville compared to Schwarzenegger."

Baldwin said that his fantasy opponent would be Joe Liebermann, the former conservative Democrat from Connecticut who went independent after losing the party ticket. In the end, however, he conceded that his political ambitions lie in his native New York.

“Here anything can happen,” Mr Baldwin said. “People get sick, die. They’re offered lucrative deals and want to cash in and make money for their retirement. People misstep. Unfortunately, an opportunity for me may mean bad things for someone else.”

Baldwin knows all about missteps. His failure to curb his tongue has brought him close to derailing his career more than once. Most recently lawyers for his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, publicly released a voicemail recording when Mr Baldwin called his 12-year-old daughter a “thoughtless little pig”.

The actor and Basinger were then embroiled in a bitter custody case.

Baldwin’s rehabilitation came courtesy of 30 Rock the show written by Palin-lookalike Tina Fey. Saturday Night Live also gave him the opportunity to share the screen with the real Mrs Palin whom he later called a “beautiful, beautiful woman” and “Bible Spice” while conceding she was not who he would want with her finger on the nuclear button.

Baldwin has not always been so courteous about those on the other side of the political divide. In his Huffington Post blog, he once called former vice president Dick Cheney "a lying, thieving Oil Whore. Or a murderer of the US Constitution.”

Of the Republicans driving Bill Clinton’s impeachment, he told Conan O’Brien’s Late Show: “If we were in another country... we would stone them to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families, for what they're doing to this country.”

Baldwin later apologised, and the network explained his remarks were meant as a joke and promised not to rerun them.

His remarks came as another former Saturday Night Live star, Al Franken, was preparing to be sworn in to the Senate after the climax of an eight month battle over the Senate election in Minnesota.

A day earlier, the actor Kal Penn, who starred with Hugh Laurie in the medical drama House took up his new job as a representative for the arts in the Obama White House on a sabbatical from Hollywood. The House scriptwriters gave his character a self-inflicted death to free him up for government service.

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