NEW YORK CITY: A Canadian actress accused of stalking US movie star Alec Baldwin was found in contempt of a New York criminal court Wednesday and sentenced to 30 days in custody, her lawyer said.
Genevieve Sabourin, whom Baldwin first met in 2000 and admitted taking to dinner in New York in February 2010, repeatedly angered Judge Robert Mandelbaum for interrupting and heckling witnesses.
As the 55-year-old Baldwin testified for just under two hours on Tuesday, an angry and emotional Sabourin shouted that he was a liar, repeatedly interrupted and told his wife to go to hell.
On Wednesday, Sabourin continued to sigh, gesticulate and express impatience before taking the stand with her own version of events, namely that Baldwin pursued her for a romantic relationship.
Sabourin's lawyer confirmed his client had been held in contempt and sentenced to 30 days in custody.
As the court broke for lunch, Sabourin called out for him to help arrange for her dog to be looked after in her absence.
Baldwin denies having sex with Sabourin and accuses her of bombarding him with hundreds of unwanted phone calls and emails and of sending "vile" Twitter messages to his wife.
She was arrested in April 2012, just days after showing up at Baldwin's Manhattan apartment, after the star of the hit comedy TV series "30 Rock" filed stalking charges.
The actress denies stalking Baldwin and has said she just wants "closure" at the end of a romantic relationship.
She testified that at the meal when they met in Montreal in 2000 in the company of film producer Martin Bregman, Baldwin passed his contact details under the table but that she never called him because at the time he was married to Kim Basinger.
She said she subsequently saw him many times on set for the 2002 film "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," for which she was a publicist.
"He was very warm, very flirtatious but very married so I never called him," she told the court.
She denied having a romantic relationship with Bregman, despite Baldwin telling the court Tuesday that Sabourin was the producer's mistress on and off for 10 years.
Bregman has refused to testify in the case.
Sabourin said Bregman gave her phone number to Baldwin in 2010 and that he rang her up being "most flirtatious".
When asked by her lawyer if Baldwin appeared to be romantically interested, she replied: "Oh yeah."
She said he called her every day after that, with the calls becoming increasingly personal.
When she came to New York in 2010, she said it was just to see Baldwin, who promised to take her to dinner with movie star Richard Gere and his wife, offering to arrange her flights and hotel.
She said Baldwin then took her on what she described as an "incredible and very romantic night to remember".
"Our goals were very similar. We were both looking for a serious relationship," she said.
She says they drove around Central Park after she told him it was her favorite spot in New York, and then went to Times Square to watch a play starring Alicia Silverstone, whom they met backstage.
She described the night as "a fantastic date... with a guy who is single and wants to get married and have kids."
Sabourin appeared to have difficulty understanding repeated sustained objections from Baldwin's lawyer.
At one point she demanded of Mandelbaum: "Don't you want to know the truth?"
Baldwin says their dinner was purely to advise her on forging an acting career and was nothing more than a "favor" to Bregman, who was allegedly desperate to be rid of his girlfriend.
He claims he never saw her again until she turned up uninvited at his Long Island home on March 31, 2012, the afternoon that he got engaged to his second wife Hilaria.
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