The man who is the inspiration for a popular game, has a dish named after him, met his wife in rather fortuitous circumstances, got rejected for a role because of a body part, and even featured in a soap opera at one time. Learn 60 bodacious facts about the one and only Kevin Bacon as he turns 60 years old this July.
Head Full Of Glitter
For the prom dance sequence at the end of Footloose, which was re-shot in slo-mo six weeks before the film's release, Bacon spent days having buckets and buckets of glitter thrown over his head!
Bacon In Bacon
Stranger things have happened, but this is definitely high up on the list. "Bacon Kevin Bacon" was a bust created with bits of bacon on Styrofoam commissioned by a Seattle bacon-flavored condiment company in 2010. This masterpiece was later auctioned off for charity.
Don't start dancing yet, there's more...
It Runs In The Family
Both his kids have chosen professions similar to the lines of their parents which involve the spotlight. His 29-year-old son Travis plays guitar for the metal band Black Anvil, and his 26-year-old daughter Susie is an actress, best known for playing Skye in 13 Reasons Why.
Bacon And Eggs
Kevin Bacon is known for his absolute love for eggs! He has starred in many commercials for the American Egg Board touting eggs as a nutritious breakfast because, as he says, "nobody knows eggs better than Bacon."
A Fabulous Appearance
Will and Grace are known for having some awesome guest appearance. And Kevin Bacon is at the top of the list! Bacon played himself, or rather a needy cheapskate spoof of himself who wanted to hire a personal assistant to help him find his stalker!
Fear Of Public Speaking?
It seems weird to have this fear as an actor, but Bacon had to take half a Valium to get through the scene in Footloose where Ren makes a speech to the town council to get them to agree to allow a school dance. Apparently, without the calming medication, the actor broke out in hives!
Not Being Sexy Enough For Footloose
Everyone who knows Bacon knows that the defiant dancing teen in Footloose cemented his career, but what you don’t know is that he almost didn’t get the part! Apparently, studio execs Dawn Steel didn’t think he was “F*ckable “ enough for the role. I think after casting him as the part he was proved very, very, very wrong.
Tight-Lipped On Secret To Successful Marriage
He commented on the experience he feels when interviewers try to quiz him on his secret to a successful marriage: "Every time I go there, this thing that's so important to me gets boiled down to a one-liner, and that sort of cheapens it," he said. "So, I'm like, you know what? I'm done."
Footloose Didn't Really Improve His Career
Bacon moved to New York with some serious goals to achieve acting success. He told The Guardian "When I came to New York, I already considered myself a man of wisdom and experience. I had an idea of this kind of actor that I should be. Someone who should be respected, serious, versatile, like Meryl Streep," however, after his role in footloose things did not exactly turn out how he had planned.
"Then all of a sudden I was like a pop star. I was on the cover of Seventeen, People, Us. But the choices that I started to make after Footloose were ill-advised. I didn't have a manager, I wasn't going to pay someone another 15 percent to tell me what to do -- I know what to do. As a result, it was almost like self-sabotage."
A Huge Milestone Is On The Cards
This is not only the year that Bacon turns 60, but also the year that he and Kyra Sedgwick celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary on September 4! They are one of the Hollywood couples who has lasted the longest together.
First Movie Paycheck Spent In A Week
At the tender age of 18 he got his first role in a movie, he played frat boy Chip Diller who gets flattened (literally) by a stampede of people in 1978’s version of Animal House. He told Entertainment Weekly “ I shot the movie, came home, spent the money in a week, probably, then went back to waiting tables,"
Nicknamed "Chip" While Waitering
Before he made it big as the dancing heartthrob in Footloose, Bacon was a waiter at an Upper West Side hangout, All-State Café. The place was like the real version of Cheers where everyone who worked there has nicknames. His co-workers used his Animal House characters name ‘This Chip’ in the workplace.
A Brief Soap Opera Career
Bacon had his stint on a soap opera from 1980-1981. He played Tim Werner on the soap opera Guiding Light. Tim was a teenager struggling with a drinking problem which only got worse when he found out his girlfriend was in love with his best friend. Talk about dramatic!
He Credits One Movie For Changing His Career
Despite not getting the kind of leading roles he wanted post-Footloose, there was one brief but memorable role that stuck in his mind. He claims his role as a gat hustler in Oliver Stone’s JFL for saving his career
In the movie, there is a line where Bacon’s character tells Jim Garrison "You don't know shit, ‘because you've never been f*cked in the ass," Bacon claims about this line "The years between Footloose and JFK, there's not a successful movie in there," Bacon said. "This one came out, and the phone started ringing, literally."
A Jack Of All Trades
Sounds crazy, but it’s true! He's been "Jack" in Friday the 13th, Quicksilver, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, My Dog Skip, Frost/Nixon, and Super (we must admit he’s actually Jacques in that last one, but it still counts).
Accidental Matchmakers
Daniels and Nixon starred in an off-Broadway adaptation of Lanford Wilson’s Lemon Sky in 1985. When they wanted to film the production, both Daniels and Nixon passed on the opportunity. "And my wife took Cynthia's part, and I took Jeff's part, so I really have him to thank for my marriage," Bacon told The Hollywood Reporter.
Not Your Typical New Yorker...
Bacon tried his best to refute the common perceptions of New Yorkers as cold people so whenever he sees people looking confused, he stops and offers help to tourists in Manhattan. Talented and kind!
Randomly Inviting A Flashmob To His Home
Bacon is not one of those celebrities that are too snobby to do common things like ride the subway. He claims, "it's the fastest way between point A and point B," and clearly, also a good way to meet new musicians!
Bacon tells the awesome story: I heard an amazing a cappella band," he told amNewYork. "They came on the train and started a fake fight, then broke into song. I invited them to my house for Thanksgiving and surprised my family."
Coast To Coast
Although Bacon and Sedgwick spent decades dissing life in Los Angeles, they eventually admitted that the city grew on them after Sedgwick spent long periods of time there filming seven seasons of The Closer. When the show ended, they even purchased a home in the Los Feliz neighborhood in 2011.
Inspiration Behind Six Degrees Of Separation
Three students at Albright College, after seeing a commercial for Bacon 1994 comedy Up in The Air, came up with the idea that Bacon was in fact, the actor who was at the center of the entertainment universe, and that any actor could be linked back to him with just a few steps. It was then that the game The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game was born.
Although, at first, Bacon himself disliked the idea and thought it was poking fun at him, after speaking to the game's creators he got on board and even wrote a forward to the book ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’.
Guess Who's His Number One
In these six degrees game, it is not surprising that his wife has a score of one. Not only have they worked together more than a dozen times, including his directing her in episodes of ‘The Closer’, but Sedgwick is Bacon's ninth cousin once removed, which they learned when they appeared on the PBS ancestry series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. There’s also of course, the fact that she is his wife…
Britney Spears Is One Degree Of Bacon
It may come as a surprise, but Spears co-starred with him in a 2016 Apple commercial where she catches him dancing to “Oops I Did It Again". Other celebs scoring a Bacon number of 1 include Benedict Cumberbatch, Cindy Crawford, Dakota Johnson AND Fanning, Fran Drescher, Harry Connick, Jr., Jimmy O. Yang, Josh Groban, Peter Skarsgard, Kimora Lee Simmons and a whole lot more.
Even President Trump Is On The Bacon Boar
You can check it out for yourself, politicians like Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill de Blasio can all be connected to Bacon in only two steps!
A Stickler For Rules
One of the rules of this hilarious game is that just meeting Bacon does not count for anything. "A lot of people have a misconception," he told the Los Angeles Times. "They come up to me on the street and say, ‘I'm one degree now, right?' And I just say, ‘Sure.'"
All Fun And Games
"Kevin Bacon turned the Six Degrees game connecting him to other Hollywood actors into a game-changing non-profit aimed at using everyday activities to connect people and causes." He has raised more than $5 million since the creation of the game in 2007 to help raise funds for human rights campaigns!
A Victoria's Secret Doppelganger?
Actress, Victoria's Secret model, and former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker also apparently has an awesome sense of humor. Decker Instagrammed a makeup-free selfie beside a photo of Bacon and proclaimed, "We're f*cking twins." And honestly, we see what she means!
Denis Leary Once Pretended To Be Kevin Bacon
Leary told Jimmy Fallon that for him, looking exactly like Bacon got him into some serious trouble! Leary tells the story that he once nabbed an Uber ride on a rainy day in New York City because the driver thought he was Kevin Bacon. Leary played along -- as anyone in their right mind would do in a NYC downpour -- but was busted and thrown out of the ride when the driver put him on the phone with his wife, a fan of Bacon that could tell he wasn’t the real deal!
Dish Named After Him
The Hungry Bros. food truck, which operates in Cincinnati from a converted potato chip delivery vehicle and has won three Best of Taste of Cincinnati awards has one very special dish on their menu: a waffle fries dish called the Kevin Bacon. The fries are covered with chicken breasts, bacon (as we can imagine) and buttermilk ranch dressing…yum!
As Fate Would Have It
Before he found long-lasting love, Bacon was seeing another actress, Tracy Pollan and Bacon lived together in New York City for five whole years. In a crazy coincidence, Pollan went on to marry her Family Ties and Bright Lights, Big City co-star Michael J. Fox the same year Bacon and Sedgwick were married.
Proud Of His "Classic Horror Movie Death"
Among the things that are important to Bacon, having a good horror death is one of them! In the first Friday the 13th movie, Bacons character Jack slept with his girlfriend, sparked up a joint, and then got stabbed in the neck, Bacon told Entertainment Weekly, “I did have a classic horror movie death, which is, you f*ck the girl, you smoke the joint, you're dead. So that was good."
Won't Get Loose For Footloose At Weddings
Bacon is not the kind of guy that likes to take the attention away from newlyweds. And that’s why he usually slips a 20 to the DJ when he attends a wedding so that they won't play Footloose since everyone looks at him and expects him to dance!
Late Night Talk Shows Are Exceptions
Even Kevin Bacon needs to refresh his dance moves once in a while, which is why in 2014 he rented Footloose for a Tonight Show sketch in which dancing had been outlawed till Bacon boogies on stage.
Scaredy Rat?
Mice is another one of Bacon’s valid fears. "I don't mind rats, just mice," he told Parade. "They're small. If I find a dead mouse, Kyra has to clean it up. It just grosses me out!"
No Looking Back
You would think one of the best parts of being an actor is getting to see yourself on the big screen, but not for Bacon! "I don’t really like it because I don’t really like what I did for the most part. I'm pretty critical," he admitted in an interview with the Independent.
Why He Calls The Oscars 'The Bitter Season'
Why is this? Well, "Because I sit around and watch everybody else gets nominated for Oscars," he said in the Telegraph. But laughs aside, Bacon has nothing to be embarrassed of. He has won a Screen Actors Guild Award in 1996 for Apollo 13, and a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the 2009 HBO movie Taking Chance.
Falling For A Ponzi
Although they could never give an exact figure, Bacon and Sedgwick admit to losing millions of dollars as a result of being part of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme scandal back in 2008. About the time, Bacon claimed: "It was a bad day, an absolutely horrible feeling, but you roll up your sleeves and get back to work."
Almost Sweet Revenge
Although Robert De Niro was featured in HBO’s Wizard of Lies, as the white-collar criminal, Bacon claimed that joining the cast would have been very satisfying. "If the part was good if the gig was good. It would actually be sort of a great, full circle thing if I got paid to be in a Madoff movie -- that would be perfect," he said.
Nose Job Or No Job?
On the TONIGHT Show, Jim Carrey did an impersonation of Bacon poking fun at his nose, but he is not the only one who isn’t a fan. He was not given a role in a Franco Zeffirelli-directed film since he was told "Franco didn't like your nose."- Ouch!
The Bacon Brothers
Bacon is not only talented when it comes to the realms of acting, but he also happens to be quite the musician! Since 1995 Bacon and his brothers have been recording music and performing live as the Bacon Brothers.
TV Skeptic To TV Star
Bacon recalls his previous distaste at the thought of being a TV actor: "It might be hard for people to remember, but in the 1970s when I started, there were TV actors and movie actors; they weren't the same," he said. "You'd be in television until you'd be able to get a career in movies, and then you'd never look back. I wanted to do stage and movies, but I really didn't want to do television."
However, after his wife Sedgwick had such success starring in The Closer, he changed his mind and signed on to play serial killer-chasing former FBI agent Ryan Hardy in the 2013-15 Fox drama The Following.
Failure To Reboot
Although Bacon turned down offers to star in TV series adaptations of Diner and Animal House, earlier this year he filmed a pilot for a TV reboot of the cult classic ‘Tremors’. Sadly, the network passed up the opportunity.
Tremors Gave Him A Panic Attack
Despite his excitement at the prospect of reviving Tremors in 2018, Bacon claims that the movie once caused him to suffer from an existential panic attack!
I was standing on 87th and Broadway in New York with my wife, and we were talking about my career. I was running out of money, had a baby on the way, and I had a total anxiety attack. And I told her, ‘I can't believe I'm doing a fucking movie about underground worms.' I think that was probably a low point."
He’s Done An Impersonation Of Himself
In a hilarious Logitech commercial that was shot in 2010, Bacon played a Kevin Bacon fan whose wife told him if he watched enough Kevin Bacon movies he could turn into Bacon himself!
Back To TV With Matt Damon And Ben Affleck
All Bacon fans have something huge to look forward to as Bacon is set to star in Showtimes Damon and Affleck-produced drama City on a Hill, playing a respected, but corrupt, Boston FBI agent who teams up with a local district attorney to take down a family of armored car thieves.
Two Times A Boston FBI Agent
In 2015, a biopic about an infamous Boston mobster, Whitey Bulger portrayed Bacon as the head of the Boston FBI office. The biopic, Black Mass, also starred Johnny Depp as the Boston mobster.
Signing Legs?
Her prosthetic leg to be more specific. She was a huge fan of the band Bacon’s Brothers and asked both siblings to sign her prosthesis which they did after their show.
Locked Naked Inside A Tank For Weeks
Talk about method acting... Bacon lost 20 pounds for the same role as Henri Younes, an Alcatraz inmate who was locked naked inside a detention cell for three years in the 1995 thriller Murder in the First.
A Moving Performance... Literally!
The first few shots for Murder the First, the film where he played an Alcatraz inmate, Bacon was just a few miles from the Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles on January 17, 1994. Bacon happened to be handcuffed to a large table for a scene and as the earthquake started, he has to hide under the furniture as a crystal chandelier swung overhead. Who says acting isn’t a dangerous profession!
Making A PSA Advocating Male Nudity?
It was clearly a spoof, but that didn’t make it any less hilarious! The actor, who famously appeared totally naked in Wild Things and Hollow Man made a campaign for more full frontal male nudity… but Bacon claims many actually belied it was a real PSA!
The amount of people that saw it seriously blows my mind," Bacon said. "They said, ‘You said it in that thing,' and it's so clearly a joke. I mean, I'm so clearly being a smartass. It's strange."
Spoiling A Major Twist In A Movie
When Bacon retweeted a tweet sent from his producer about a major plot twist on the show, he revealed it to more than 234,000 people who followed him. Realizing his mistake at spoiling a huge plot twist, he apologized and even made an apology vine for his followers!
No Objection To Objectification
Bacon only had good feelings towards his role in the adaptation of Chris Kraus’s’ novel ‘I Love Dick’. He told GQ in 2017, "At my age, it feels great! It made me think that for the most part, art has been from the male point of view; from the male gaze," he continued, "At my age, it feels great! It made me think that for the most part, art has been from the male point of view; from the male gaze,"
Down For Anything
"He's not afraid to take even what you would consider a tiny supporting part as well as a leading role," commented Hay Russel, Bacon’s long-time friend and the director of My Dog Skip, "What that means is that he can go from part to part and literally become a new person. That's why I think he's had this long and varied career that he has had."
Sweet Bacon?
We said ALMOST any role. However, when the candy company wanted Bacon to star in a commercial that would see him playing a giant peanut M&M version of himself that would sing and dance to Footloose, he had to turn it down. The reason? His wife absolutely despises talking food on TV!
“I had to turn it down without even thinking about it," he said. "I can't come home and say, ‘Honey, I'm now a talking M&M.'"
All In A Day's Work
Bacon has had his fair share of villainous roles including playing a child molester twice (Sleepers and The Woodsman), a Marvel supervillain, and he’s stalked Meryl Streep in The River Wild. It doesn’t phase him one bit! "I've played a lot of bad guys," he said, "and I'm good at leaving my work at the office."
Life Philosophy From Football Metaphors
"I'm more of a ‘What am I going to do today when this finishes?' kind of guy," he told Haute Living. "In my day-to-day life, I'm thinking less about winning the Super Bowl and more about moving the ball down the field."
His Father Was On The Cover Of TIME
Guess all men with the middle name Norwood are super successful. Norwood senior was a famous architect and city planner who is known to many as ‘The Father of Modern Philadelphia”. This title put him on the November 6. 1964 cover of Time magazine.
Always Famous
Fame is not something he takes for granted. One time he wore a disguise to a busy outdoor mall in Los Angeles and no one recognized him! He did not like the feeling. "It sucked!" he said during a Hollywood Reporter roundtable. "It was f*cking weird. I'm just not used to this." It was the first and last time he ever tried that.
What's In A Name?
Although he is known to all of us as Kevin Bacon, little did you know there is a middle name in the equation! Kevin Norwood Bacon shares a middle name with his dad, the late Edmund Norwood Bacon.
Goal To Outdo His Dad
