Chris Pine says Alec Baldwin encouraged him to enjoy playing Jack Ryan.

The 'Star Trek' hunk was apprehensive about taking on Tom Clancy's famous spy hero in the 'Jack Ryan' franchise reboot, so he sought advice from Baldwin - who starred in first movie, 'The Hunt for Red October' - ahead of filming.

Chris said: ''Alec and I were doing voiceovers for an animated film and sometimes we'd meet as one of us was reading or coming in. I saw him one time and I was like a kid, I was like, 'Hey, I'm playing Jack Ryan, do you have any advice?'

''He just grabbed me by the shoulder and said, 'Do it. Do it. And don't let go'. Because he obviously, famously, left to do 'A Streetcar Named Desire' on Broadway.''

The 33-year-old actor fought for the film to have a more artistic vision instead of being a simple action blockbuster, and he believes the finished product strikes a happy medium.

Chris explained to GQ magazine: ''I would have been happy making 'Marathon Man' or 'The French Connection'. I would have done a long, slow action-free film and been very, very happy. That's my personal leaning, but it is 2013 and you'd get a geriatric audience if you didn't have some kind of fight stuff in there.

''So between my reticence about making it too much like Bourne and Bond, and the inclinations of the studio to make it just that, I do hope we found some place in the middle.''