Photographer Marc Santos said Baldwin, 54, approached and punched him in the face for taking photographs of Baldwin and his fiancée, Hilaria Thomas, 28, outside New York City's Marriage Bureau, according to a story and photos on the newspaper's website that appeared to show a scuffle between the two men.

Baldwin, a star of the TV show "30 Rock" and who also appears in the new "Rock of Ages" movie, posted a series of tweets Tuesday that disagreed with the account, saying, "A 'photographer' almost hit me in the face with his camera this morning."

A spokesman for Baldwin said that as the actor left the building in lower Manhattan, someone came in between him and the photographer. The photographer became frustrated and "pushed past the bystander and assaulted Alec with his camera."

"There were no punches thrown, and any subsequent physical contact was simply Alec protecting himself," the representative, Matthew Hiltzik, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Christine Kearney, editing by Jill Serjeant and Jeffrey Benkoe)

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