NEW YORK, New York --

Alec Baldwin came face-to-face with his own political nightmare when Sarah Palin paid a visit to the set of “Saturday Night Live.”

But the fiercely liberal Alec was admittedly blown away by the governor’s beauty.

“When you looked at Sarah Palin and you said, ‘You are so much hotter in person.’ Was she?” Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush asked Alec, referring to his “SNL” skit with Palin.

“You’re damn right she is!” Alec quickly replied, causing Billy and the Access crew to erupt in laughter. “She’s good looking.”

“But here is the thing — we don’t want to think about the president as being a sexual creature,” Alec continued. “You don’t think of Nixon coming down the hallway with his bathrobe open, you know what I mean.”

And while Alec clearly had a good time playing himself, opposite Palin, on “SNL,” the same can’t be said while watching Ben Affleck’s spoof of the “30 Rock” star.

During Ben’s recent hosting gig on the show, he played Alec during a mock visit to “The View.”

So what did Alec have to say about the impression?

“Does Ben Affleck do a good Alec Baldwin?” Billy asked.

“He’s terrible! He’s terrible! Can we say that?” Alec said. “It was Regis Baldwin. It was my brother Regis.”

But as for his real brother, Stephen, the younger Baldwin recently left his big bro perplexed by inking his permanent allegiance to 15-year-old Miley Cyrus with an “HM” tattoo on his upper arm.

“Do you realize that he has tattooed Hannah Montana’s initials onto his shoulder?” Billy asked Alec.

“Why did he do that?” Alec wondered. “Who knows?”

So while Stephen has left him stumped and Ben Affleck hasn’t won him over, there is one fellow celebrity Alec revealed he looks up to as an A-list role model – Tom Hanks.

“There’s only one person I know who is enormously successful and he still has all this talent, he still has a sense of humor and he still has his wife,” Alec said of the Oscar winner.

“Oh, Hanks is brilliant,” Billy said in agreement.

“He’s got it all. He’s got his wife. He’s got his kids. He’s got every movie he wants to make. Hanks is someone who I admire boundlessly. And he’s stilly funny and he’s happy,” Alec said.

“Are you happy?” Billy inquired of “30 Rock’s” Emmy-winning actor.

“I am now, because of the show I am doing,” Alec admitted.

Although “30 Rock” gets only modest ratings, for Alec, the critical acclaim is what’s most important.

“If success is the only thing, I could be playing Bozo the clown and the ratings could be high and people could be coming up and going, ‘God you’re great. We love you Bozo.’ And I’d go in my room and sob and I’d be drinking,” Alec concluded.

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