Alec Baldwin wants to prove he can be a great dad.

The '30 Rock' star, whose 17-year-old daughter, Ireland, was the subject of a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife Kim Basinger, is determined to raise his newborn daughter, Carmen, with his wife Hilaria in a happy home.

The 55-year-old actor told People.com: ''It's a second chance for me, in a way. Everybody knows I had a pretty unpleasant custody battle for Ireland.''

Budding model Ireland is ''well-adjusted and as happy as one can be,'' but Alec wants Carmen's childhood to be different.

He said: ''We just want things to be easy, to be nice.''

Shortly before Carmen's birth, he hinted he is thinking about quitting acting to focus on being a good parent.

He said: ''I have one dream in my life and that is that this daughter I'm having - she comes to me about seven or eight years from now, she has a friend, and she's at her house and she says, 'Daddy, Susie's mom says you used to be on TV. Daddy, is that true?' She has no knowledge of me as a public person. That would be heaven for me.

''I'd love to [quit acting] if I could, yeah. That would be the greatest thing in the world.''

Meanwhile, yoga instructor Hilaria, 29, is already besotted with their two-week old daughter.

She said: ''I knew I was going to love her a lot, but it's incredible how deeply.''

But she added: ''Now I'm getting to the point where if I don't sleep, I'm going to start walking into walls.''