(AFP) U.S. movie star Alec Baldwin was repeatedly interrupted and heckled by his alleged stalker as he testified against the French-Canadian actress in a New York courtroom Tuesday.
The 55-year-old denies having a sexual relationship with Genevieve Sabourin, whom he first met in 2000 in a restaurant in Montreal as the then mistress of his film-producer friend Martin Bregman.
He accuses her of bombarding him with hundreds of unwanted phone calls, emails and sending “vile” twitter messages to his young wife, after he met Sabourin again in February 2010 for dinner in New York.
Sabourin was arrested in April 2012 days after showing up at Baldwin’s Manhattan apartment when the star of the hit comedy TV series “30 Rock” filed stalking charges.
Baldwin says their Manhattan dinner was nothing more than a “favor” to Marty, allegedly desperate to be rid of his on-off girlfriend, by advising her on forging a mainstream acting career.
He denies sleeping with her but says he drove her back to the swanky Lowell Hotel, where he had helped her get a reservation.
Wearing a navy blazer and a black polo shirt, Baldwin testified for just under two hours insisting that he knew Sabourin purely in a professional context and that their subsequent email contact had been nothing more than him trying to be “polite” and shake her off.
But an angry and emotional Sabourin, dressed in a figure-hugging black and cream jumper, skin-tight black trousers and knee-high black suede boots, repeatedly interrupted Baldwin?s testimony.
She called him a liar, shook her head, at times laughed and otherwise mocked him, provoking Judge Robert Mandelbaum to repeatedly demand she be quiet or be held in contempt.
At one point Mandelbaum shouted at her: “Please don’t interrupt the testimony.”
“Don’t testify from your seat at the defense table while the witness is on the stand,” he said.
“Your honor he’s lying,” Sabourin replied at another point.
“Do you want to speak to your client before I have her removed from the courtroom?” the judge asked Sabourin’s lawyer, who was also seen repeatedly asking his client to be quiet.
At one point Sabourin and her lawyer briefly left the courtroom, but after they returned she continued to disrupt proceedings.
The hearing in a New York state criminal court began some 10 minutes late with Mandelbaum kept waiting by Sabourin’s arrival.
She blamed it on transport holdups due to the snow and being stopped by assembled media outside the courtroom.
The Canadian actress denies stalking Baldwin, saying that she was just looking for “closure” at the end of a romantic relationship.
She refused offers to settle the charges out of court.
Sabourin is barred from going anywhere near Baldwin, who married second-wife Hilaria in 2012. She gave birth to the couple’s first child, daughter Carmen, last August.