Alec Baldwin was so shocked when he was asked to host the Academy Awards he stopped to check the caller had the right number. The 51-year-old admits his career was flailing when he was offered a role in TV comedy 30 Rock. The show revived his professional life, but Alec was still stunned when the co-producer of the Oscars called to offer him the chance to present the awards alongside Steve Martin. “Adam Shankman called me to ask if I’d host with Steve, and I had to make sure he had the right number,” Baldwin told students at the Fordham Law School gala in New York last week. “So I said, ‘You know who you’re calling, right? This is 212.’ ” Alec initially planned to become a lawyer before deciding to pursue acting. While he claims his brothers willingly followed him into the profession, he doesn’t think they would have been as eager to become attorneys. “Oh, good God, no. They wouldn’t have become lawyers,” Baldwin laughed. “I’d probably be representing them right now. But I do think they saw me acting and thought, ‘If he can do it, we can do it.’ More accurately, maybe it would be, ‘if Sh*thead can do it, we can do it.’ “