Although Kevin Bacon is famous as a film actor, he began his professional acting career off-Broadway in Alan Brown's Forty Deuce, receiving an Obie award for his performance. However, his breakout role was as the temperamental "Fenwick" in Barry Levinson's classic ensemble film Diner, in 1982. He has since had notable roles in Footloose (1984), JFK (1991), A Few Good Men (1992), Apollo 13 (1995), The River Wild (1995), Sleepers (1996), My Dog Skip (2000), Hollow Man (2000), Mystic River (2003), The Woodsman (2004, with wife Kyra Sedgwick), The Air I Breathe (2008) and Frost/Nixon (2008).
Born in Philadelphia, PA, on July 8, 1958, Bacon is the youngest of six children. He and his brother, Michael, formed a rhythm and blues band in 1994, called The Bacon Brothers, and they have appeared in clubs and coffee shops, as well as on TV variety shows.
Bacon has become the subject of a cult game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," in which participants must link any actor, living or dead, to Kevin Bacon in fewer than six links. Bacon is married to Kyra Sedgwick and they have a son and a daughter.
Rarely can it be said that an actor is so recognized and of such prominence that a game can be played by connecting him to just about any other celebrity simply through referencing his resumé. Any film buff has most likely participated in a round of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, and it's likely that if their opponent was an avid cinephile they came out on the losing end of the match. This should come as no surprise, considering Bacon's extensive and diverse body of work.
Born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1958, Bacon received his education at The Circle in the Square (where he became the youngest student to appear in a production) and Manning Street Actor's Theater after leaving home at the age of 18. Two years later, Bacon made his feature debut as the smarmy Chip Diller in director John Landis' beloved frat-house epic Animal House. Following in the next few years with minor roles in such seemingly forgettable films as Hero at Large and Friday the 13th (both 1980), Bacon would re-create his off-Broadway role of a drug-addicted male prostitute in Forty Deuce the same year that he made a memorable appearance as the troubled Timothy Fenwick in Barry Levinson's Diner (1982). Though he had appeared in a few major films and displayed an intriguing range of abilities, it was 1984's Footloose that brought Bacon his breakthrough role. As the big-city boy crusading against the puritanical constraints against dancing imposed by a well-meaning but overbearing fundamentalist minister, Bacon became a teen icon -- an image that, though it propelled him to stardom, would prove difficult to shed. Following Footloose's success with a series of curious failures such as Quicksilver (1986) and White Water Summer (1987), it was on the set of Lemon Sky (also 1987) that Bacon would meet future wife Kyra Sedgwick; the couple exchanged wedding vows the following year. Though he would appear in a few other failed-but-interesting, audience-pleasing thrillers such as Tremors (1989) and Flatliners (1990) in the following years, it was with his role in conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) that Bacon found his career revived and began to shed his heartthrob image. Narrowly escaping the Brat Pack trappings of his '80s contemporaries, subsequent roles after JFK may not have all scored direct hits at the box office for Bacon, but audiences were now well aware of his talents and thirsted for more. Bacon would again prove his substantial range in the true story of a brutalized prison inmate opposite Gary Oldman in 1995's Murder in the First. His performance as the disillusioned and broken prisoner, accentuated by his famished and frail skeletal figure, was followed by an equally challenging reality-based role as a member of the troubled Apollo 13 (1995) lunar mission team in director Ron Howard's widely praised film.
Proving that he could play sleaze as successfully as slice-of-life, Bacon took a turn for the worse as the sadistic reform-school guard responsible for the rape of a trio of young boys in Sleepers (1996) and as a cop investigating accusations of rape in director John McNaughton's raunchy sex-thriller Wild Things. Bacon's entertaining turn as a receptive father tangled in a mind-bending murder mystery in Stir of Echoes (1999) gained positive reviews, though the intelligent and subtle shocker withered in the shadow of another similarly themed thriller, The Sixth Sense. Though he wasn't visible for the majority of the film, Bacon fell into psychotic territory as the malicious genius consumed by his discovery of the key to invisibility in Paul Verhoeven's sadistic Hollow Man (2000). After an uncredited supporting role in the independent comedy Novocaine, Bacon once again went for the throat in Trapped; and though audiences were generally entertained by the film, it ultimately fell victim to a quick death at the box office due to poor timing (numerous stories of child abductions had been making headlines at the time Trapped was released). Of course with an actor such as Bacon, it was only a matter of time before he once again tackled a substantial dramatic role, and with the release of Mystic River in 2003 audiences found him doing just that. Adapted from the novel of the same name by author Dennis Lehane and directed by Clint Eastwood, Mystic River provided audiences with a brutal, slow-burning study in the effects of violence and the nature of revenge, withBacon's turn as a sympathetic detective playing pitch perfect opposite a mournful performance by Sean Penn. That same year, Bacon showed up in an uncredited role in the Jane Campion thriller In the Cut before taking the lead in the emotional drama The Woodsman.
Bacon would continue to work on a variety of projects over the coming years, appearing in everything from the tense period thriller Where the Truth Lies to the ensemble rom-com Crazy, Stupid, Love, to the superhero flick X-Men: First Class. Soon however, the actor found himself hungry for a more substantial project, and he found it with the Billy Bob Thornton directed drama Jane Mansfield's Car in 2012, which found him acting alongside heavyweights like Robert Duvall and John Hurt.
In addition to his film work, Bacon has frequently toured with brother Michael, playing upbeat country-folk rock under the alliterate moniker the Bacon Brothers. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Bacon, one of six children, was born and raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Ruth Hilda (née Holmes; 1916–1991), taught at an elementary school and was a liberal activist, while his father, Edmund Norwood Bacon (May 2, 1910 – October 14, 2005), was a well-respected architect and a prominent Philadelphian who had been Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission for many years. At 16, in 1975, Bacon won a full scholarship to and attended the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts at Bucknell University, a state-funded five-week arts program where he studied Theatre under Dr. Glory Van Scott, which helped solidify Bacon's passion for the arts.
Acting career
Bacon left home at age 17 to pursue a theater career in New York, where he appeared in a production at the Circle in the Square Theater School. "I wanted life, man, the real thing", he later recalled to Nancy Mills of Cosmopolitan. "The message I got was 'The arts are it. Business is the devil's work. Art and creative expression are next to godliness.' Combine that with an immense ego and you wind up with an actor."[4]
Bacon's debut in the fraternity comedy Animal House in 1978 did not lead to the fame for which he had hoped,[citation needed] and Bacon returned to waiting tables and auditioning for small roles in theater. He briefly worked on the television soap operas Search for Tomorrow (1979) and The Guiding Light (1980–81) in New York. He refused an offer of a television series based on Animal House to be filmed in California in order to remain close to the New York stage[citation needed] . Some of his early stage work included Getting Out performed at New York's Phoenix Theater, and Flux which he did at Second Stage Theatre during their 1981–1982 season.
Bolstered by the attention garnered by his performance in Diner, Bacon starred in the 1984 box-office smash Footloose. Richard Corliss of TIME likened Footloose to the James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause and the old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland musicals, commenting that the film includes "motifs on book burning, mid-life crisis, AWOL parents, fatal car crashes, drug enforcement, and Bible Belt vigilantism."[5] To prepare for the role, Bacon enrolled at a high school as a transfer student named "Ren McCormick" and studied teenagers before leaving in the middle of the day.[citation needed] Bacon did earn strong reviews for Footloose,[6] and he appeared on the cover of People magazine soon after its release.
Bacon's critical and box-office success lead to a period of typecasting in roles similar to the two he portrayed in Diner and Footloose. Bacon would have difficulty shaking this on-screen image. For the next several years he chose films that cast him against either type and experienced, by his own estimation, a career slump. In 1988, he starred in John Hughes' comedy She's Having a Baby and the following year he was in another comedy called The Big Picture.
In 1990, Bacon had two successful roles. He played a character who saved his town from under-the-earth "graboid" monsters in the comedy/horror film Tremors – a role that People found him "far too accomplished"[citation needed] to play – and portrayed an earnest medical student experimenting with death in Joel Schumacher's Flatliners.
Bacon's next project was to star opposite Elizabeth Perkins in He Said, She Said. Despite lukewarm reviews and low audience turnout, He Said, She Said was illuminating for Bacon. Required to play a character with sexist attitudes, he admitted that the role was not that large a stretch for him.
By 1991, Bacon began to give up the idea of playing leading men in big-budget films and to remake himself as a character actor. "The only way I was going to be able to work on 'A' projects with really 'A' directors was if I wasn't the guy who was starring", he confided to The New York Times writer Trip Gabriel. "You can't afford to set up a $40 million movie if you don't have your star."[7]
He performed that year as gay prostitute Willie O'Keefe in Oliver Stone's JFK. He went on to play a prosecuting attorney in the military courtroom drama A Few Good Men. Later that year he returned to the theater to play in Spike Heels, directed by Michael Greif.
Bacon receiving a Merit Award in April 2010
In 1994, Bacon earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role in The River Wild opposite Meryl Streep. He described the film to Chase in Cosmopolitan as a "grueling shoot," in which "every one of us fell out of the boat at one point or another and had to be saved."
His next film, Murder in the First, earned him the Broadcast Film Critic's Association Award in 1995, the same year that he starred in the blockbuster hit Apollo 13.
Bacon reverted to his trademark dark role once again in Sleepers in 1996. This role was in stark contrast to his appearance in the lighthearted romantic comedy, Picture Perfect the following year. Bacon again resurrected his oddball mystique that year as a mentally-challenged houseguest in Digging to China, and as a disc jockey corrupted by payola in Telling Lies in America. As the executive producer of 1998's Wild Things, Bacon reserved a supporting role for himself, and went on to star in Stir of Echoes (directed by David Koepp) in 1999, and in Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man in 2000.
Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard depict a ménage à trois in their film, Where the Truth Lies. Bacon and director Atom Egoyan have condemned the MPAA ratings board decision to give the film their "NC-17" rating over the preferable "R". Bacon decried the decision, commenting: "I don't get it, when I see films (that) are extremely violent, extremely objectionable sometimes in terms of the roles that women play, slide by with an R, no problem, because the people happen to have more of their clothes on."[8] Bacon was again acclaimed for a dark starring role playing an offending pedophile on parole in the 2004 filmThe Woodsman; he was nominated best actor receiving the Independent Spirit Award.
Bacon speaking before a premiere of Taking Chance in February 2009
Bacon has been married to actress Kyra Sedgwick since September 4, 1988; they met on the set of the PBS version of Lanford Wilson's play Lemon Sky. He has said "The time I was hitting what I considered to be bottom was also the time I met my wife, our kids were born, good things were happening. And I was able to keep supporting myself; that always gave me strength."[4]
Bacon has spoken out for the separation of church and state,[14][15] and told The Times of London in 2005 that he did not "believe in God."[16] However, he has also said that he is not anti-religion.[17]
Bacon and Sedgwick learned in 2011 via their appearance on the PBS TV show Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates that he and Sedgwick are 10th cousins, once removed.[20]
Bacon is the subject of the trivia game titled Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, based on the idea that, due to his prolific screen career covering a diverse range of genres, any Hollywood actor can be linked to another in a handful of steps based on their associations with Bacon. The name of the game derives from the idea of six degrees of separation.
Though he was initially dismayed by the game, the meme stuck, and Bacon eventually embraced it, forming the charitable initiative SixDegrees.org, a social networking site intended to link people and charities to each other.[21]
The measure of proximity to Bacon has been mathematically formalized as the Bacon Index and can be referenced at websites including Oracle Of Bacon which is in turn based upon Internet Movie Database data.
Music
In the wake of the Wet Bacon split, Kevin formed a band called The Bacon Brothers with his brother, Michael. The duo has released six albums.
^"I think there is a puritanical wind that is blowing. I have never seen such a lack of separation between church and state in America. I don't believe in God, but if I did I would say that sex is a God-given right." Wendy Ide, "The Outsider Wants In", The Times (London), 1 December 2005.
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