Kevin Bacon | |
---|---|
Born | Kevin Norwood Bacon July 8, 1958 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1977–present |
Works | Filmography |
Spouse | |
Children | 2, including Sosie Bacon |
Father | Edmund Bacon |
Relatives |
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Website | baconbros |
Kevin Norwood Bacon [1] (born July 8, 1958) [2] is an American actor. Known for his leading man and character roles, Bacon has received numerous accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award.
Bacon made his feature film debut in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) and performed in Diner (1982) before his breakthrough role in the musical-drama film Footloose (1984). Since then, he has starred in critically acclaimed films such as JFK (1991), A Few Good Men (1992), Apollo 13 (1995), Mystic River (2003), and Frost/Nixon (2008). Other notable credits include Friday the 13th (1980), Tremors (1990), The River Wild (1994), The Woodsman (2004), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), X-Men: First Class (2011), and Patriots Day (2016). Bacon has also directed the films Losing Chase (1996) and Loverboy (2005).
On television, Bacon received a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his role as Lt. Col. Michael Strobl in the HBO original film Taking Chance (2009). He starred in the Fox drama series The Following from 2013 to 2015. Bacon played the title role in Amazon Prime Video series I Love Dick from 2016 to 2017; he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his work on the show. From 2019 to 2022, he starred in the Showtime series City on a Hill . [3]
The Guardian named Bacon one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. [4] In 2003, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. [5]
Bacon's prolific career in a variety of genres has led him to become associated with the concept of interconnectedness among people, as evidenced by the trivia game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". He is a brand ambassador for British mobile network operator EE and has been featured in several ads for the company. [6] Bacon is married to actress Kyra Sedgwick.
Bacon was born and raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia. [2] He is the youngest of six children. His mother, Ruth Hilda (née Holmes; 1916–1991), taught at an elementary school and was a liberal activist, [2] while his father, Edmund Bacon (1910–2005), was an urban planner who served as executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and authored the seminal text Design of Cities . [7]
Bacon attended Julia R. Masterman School in the Spring Garden section of Philadelphia for both middle and high school. [8]
At age 16, in 1975, Bacon won a full state-funded scholarship to the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, [9] a five-week arts program where he studied theater under Glory Van Scott. The experience solidified Bacon's passion for the arts. [10] [7]
Bacon left home at age 17 to pursue a theater career in New York City, 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." [11] Bacon's debut in the fraternity comedy National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) did not lead to the fame he had sought, and Bacon returned to waiting tables and auditioning for small roles in theater. [7] He briefly worked on the television soap operas Search for Tomorrow (1979) and Guiding Light (1980–81) in New York.
In 1980, he appeared in the slasher film Friday the 13th. [12] Some of his early-stage work included Getting Out , performed at New York's Phoenix Theater, and Flux , at Second Stage Theatre during their 1981–1982 season. [13]
In 1982, he won an Obie Award for his role in Forty Deuce , [14] and soon afterward he made his Broadway debut in Slab Boys , with then-unknowns Sean Penn and Val Kilmer. However, it was not until he portrayed Timothy Fenwick that same year in Barry Levinson's film Diner –costarring Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Tim Daly, and Ellen Barkin –that he made an indelible impression on film critics and moviegoers alike. [15]
Bolstered by the attention garnered by his performance in Diner, Bacon starred in Footloose (1984). [13] 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." [16] 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. [7] [17] Bacon earned strong reviews for Footloose. [18] Bacon's critical and box office success led to a period of typecasting in roles similar to the two he portrayed in Diner and Footloose, and he had 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.
After a cameo in John Hughes's 1987 comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles , [19] Bacon starred in John Hughes's 1988 comedy She's Having a Baby , [13] and the following year he was in another comedy called The Big Picture . [20]
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 , [21] and he portrayed an earnest medical student experimenting with death in Joel Schumacher's Flatliners . [13]
In Bacon's next project he starred 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. [13]
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." [22] He performed that year as gay prostitute Willie O'Keefe in Oliver Stone's JFK [23] and went on to play a prosecuting attorney in the military courtroom drama A Few Good Men . [24] Later that year he returned to the theater to play in Spike Heels, directed by Michael Greif. [13]
In 1994, Bacon earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role in The River Wild , [13] 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, [13] the same year that he starred in the blockbuster hit Apollo 13 . [25] Bacon played a trademark dark role once again in Sleepers (1996). [26] This part starkly contrasted with his appearance in the lighthearted romantic comedy, Picture Perfect (1997). [13]
Bacon made his debut as a director with the television film Losing Chase (1996), which was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, and won one. [27] Bacon again resurrected his oddball mystique that year as a mentally-challenged houseguest in Digging to China [13] and as a disc jockey corrupted by payola in Telling Lies in America . [13] As the executive producer of Wild Things (1998), Bacon reserved a supporting role for himself and went on to star in Stir of Echoes (1999), directed by David Koepp. [28]
In 2000, he appeared in Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man. [29] Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard depict a ménage à trois in their film, Where the Truth Lies . [30] Bacon and director Atom Egoyan condemned the MPAA ratings board decision to rate the film "NC-17" rather than the preferable "R". Bacon commented: "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." [31] That same year, he played the gruff father in the family film My Dog Skip . [32]
In 2003, Bacon acted with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins in Clint Eastwood's movie Mystic River . He was again acclaimed for a dark starring role playing an offending pedophile on parole in The Woodsman (2004), for which he was nominated for best actor and received the Independent Spirit Award. [33]
In 2005, Bacon was in the comedy film Beauty Shop with Queen Latifah. He appeared in the HBO Films production of Taking Chance (2009), based on an eponymous story written by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, an American Desert Storm war veteran. [34] The film premiered on HBO on February 21, 2009. Bacon won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie for his role.
On July 15, 2010, it was confirmed that Bacon would appear in Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class as mutant villain Sebastian Shaw. [35] [36] The film was released in 2011, the same year as the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love , in which Kevin portrayed a co-worker involved in an affair.
In March 2012, Bacon was featured in a performance of Dustin Lance Black's play, 8 – a staged reenactment of the federal trial that overturned California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage – as Attorney Charles J. Cooper. [37] The production was held at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre and broadcast on YouTube to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights. [38] [39]
From 2013 to 2015, Bacon starred as Ryan Hardy in the FOX television series The Following . [40] In 2013, he won a Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television for that role. [41] In 2015, he appeared in the crime film Black Mass , which starred Johnny Depp.
In 2015, he said in a Huffington Post interview he would like to return to the Tremors franchise. [42] However, Bacon did not appear in Tremors 5: Bloodline (2015). He starred in Patriots Day in 2016, which was about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
In 1995, Kevin formed a band called The Bacon Brothers with his brother, Michael. The duo has released seven albums. [43] Bacon also sings in a variety of other media; he has serenaded his goats on Instagram, [44] and sings with the band the Old 97's in his role as himself in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special . [45]
Beginning in 2012, Bacon has appeared in a major advertising campaign for EE in the United Kingdom, based on the Six Degrees concept and his various film roles. [46] [47] In 2015, he became a commercial spokesperson for the U.S. egg industry. [48]
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 association with Bacon. The name of the game derives from the idea of six degrees of separation. Although he was initially dismayed by the game, the meme stuck, and Bacon eventually embraced it, forming the charitable initiative SixDegrees.org, a social networking service intended to link people and charities to each other. [49]
The measure of proximity to Bacon has been mathematically formalized as the Bacon number and can be referenced at websites including Oracle of Bacon, which is in turn based upon Wikipedia data (and formerly from Internet Movie Database data). In 2012, Google added a feature to their search engine, whereby searching for an actor's name followed by the words "Bacon Number" will show the ways in which that actor is connected to Kevin Bacon. [50] This feature is no longer active.
A similar measurement exists in the mathematics community, where one measures how far one is removed from co-writing a mathematical paper with the prolific and itinerant mathematician Paul Erdős. This is done by means of the Erdős number, which is 0 for Paul Erdős himself, 1 for someone who co-wrote an article with him, 2 for someone who co-wrote with someone who co-wrote with him, etc. People have combined the Bacon number and the Erdős number to form the Erdős–Bacon number, which is the sum of the two. [51]
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." [11] Bacon and Sedgwick have starred together in Pyrates, Murder in the First , The Woodsman , and Loverboy . They have two children, Travis Sedgwick (b. 1989) and Sosie Ruth (b. 1992). They reside on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. [52] Bacon was previously in a five-year relationship with actress Tracy Pollan, in the 1980s. [53]
Bacon has spoken out for the separation of church and state, [54] [55] and told The Times in 2005 that he did not "believe in God." [56] He has also said that he is not anti-religion. [57]
Bacon and Sedgwick appeared in will.i.am's video "It's a New Day", which was released following Barack Obama's 2008 presidential win.
The pair lost part of their savings in the Ponzi scheme of infamous swindler Bernie Madoff. [58] [59]
Bacon and Sedgwick learned in 2011, via their appearance on the PBS TV series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, that they are ninth cousins, once removed. [60] They also appeared in a video [61] promoting the "Bill of Reproductive Rights", supporting among other things a woman's right to choose and have access to birth control. [62]
Kevin Spacey Fowler is an American actor. Known for his work on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and two Laurence Olivier Awards as well as nominations for 12 Emmy Awards. Spacey was named an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2015.
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Hanks is ranked as the fifth-highest-grossing American film actor. Over his career he has received numerous awards including two Academy Awards, seven Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for five BAFTA Awards and a Tony Award. He has been honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2020.
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon or Bacon's Law is a parlor game where players challenge each other to arbitrarily choose an actor and then connect them to another actor via a film that both actors have appeared in together, repeating this process to try to find the shortest path that ultimately leads to prolific American actor Kevin Bacon. It rests on the assumption that anyone involved in the Hollywood film industry can be linked through their film roles to Bacon within six steps. The game's name is a reference to "six degrees of separation", a concept that posits that any two people on Earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart.
Footloose is a 1984 American musical drama film directed by Herbert Ross and written by Dean Pitchford. It tells the story of Ren McCormack, a teenager from Chicago who moves to a small town, where he attempts to overturn the ban on dancing instituted by the efforts of a local minister.
Alfred Thomas Highmore is an English actor. He is known for his starring roles beginning as a child, in the films Finding Neverland (2004), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Arthur and the Invisibles (2006), August Rush (2007), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), and Astro Boy (2009). He won two consecutive Critics' Choice Movie Awards for Best Young Performer.
Kyra Minturn Sedgwick is an American film and television actress. She is best known for her starring role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the crime drama The Closer (2005–2012), for which she won a Golden Globe in 2007 and an Emmy Award in 2010. She also starred in the 1992 TV film Miss Rose White, which won an Emmy Award. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her performance in the 1995 film Something to Talk About. Sedgwick's other film credits include Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Cameron Crowe's Singles (1992). She also had a recurring role as Madeline Wuntch on the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Sedgwick is married to fellow actor Kevin Bacon.
Jeremy Merton Sisto is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Billy Chenowith in HBO's Six Feet Under, NYPD Detective Cyrus Lupo in NBC's Law & Order, George Altman in the ABC sitcom Suburgatory, for which he was nominated for a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series, and Jubal Valentine in the CBS drama series FBI. He has appeared in such films as Clueless (1995), Suicide Kings (1997), Jesus (1999), Thirteen (2003), and Waitress (2007).
The Woodsman is a 2004 American drama film directed by Nicole Kassell in her feature directorial debut, from a screenplay by Kassell and Steven Fechter, and based on the play of the same name by Fechter. Starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, the film follows a convicted child molester who must adjust to life after being released from prison. The title of the film refers to the woodsman from the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, who kills the wolf to save the titular child.
The Bacon Brothers is an American music duo consisting of brothers Michael Bacon and Kevin Bacon.
Nicole Kassell is an American filmmaker. She made her film debut with the drama film The Woodsman (2004), for which she was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Kassell has also worked on television shows such as Vinyl, The Leftovers and Watchmen.
A person's Erdős–Bacon number is the sum of one's Erdős number—which measures the "collaborative distance" in authoring academic papers between that person and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—and one's Bacon number—which represents the number of links, through roles in films, by which the person is separated from American actor Kevin Bacon. The lower the number, the closer a person is to Erdős and Bacon, which reflects a small world phenomenon in academia and entertainment.
Christopher Chace Crawford is an American actor. He is known for his television portrayals of Nate Archibald on the series Gossip Girl (2007–2012), and of Kevin Moskowitz / The Deep in the television series The Boys (2019–present) and the resulting franchise. He is also known for starring in the films The Covenant (2006), The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008), Twelve (2011), and What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012). In 2015, he portrayed Billy LeFever in the short-lived series Blood & Oil.
Lee Daniels is an American film producer, director, and screenwriter. He made his directorial film debut with Shadowboxer (2005), followed by Precious (2009) which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Picture. He has since directed The Paperboy, The Butler (2013), The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021), and The Deliverance (2024). He also produced the films Monster's Ball (2001), The Woodsman (2004), Tennessee (2008), Pimp (2018), and Concrete Cowboy (2020).
Sosie Ruth Bacon is an American actress. The daughter of actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, her first role was playing 10-year-old Emily in the film Loverboy (2005). While her parents did not push for her to continue acting, she was encouraged by producer James Duff to appear in The Closer (2009).
Footloose is a 2011 American musical drama film co-written and directed by Craig Brewer. It is a remake of the 1984 film of the same name, and stars Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough, Andie MacDowell and Dennis Quaid. The film follows a young man who moves from Boston to a small Southern town and protests the town's ban against dancing. Filming took place from September to November 2010 in Georgia. It was released in Australia and New Zealand on October 6, 2011, and in North America on October 14, 2011. It grossed $15.5 million in its opening weekend and $63 million worldwide.
Albert M. Chan is a Canadian actor and filmmaker based in the United States.
Steven Fechter is an American playwright. He is best known for his play, The Woodsman, and co-wrote the screenplay for the film version starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick.
The Tremors franchise consists of a series of American monster comedy-horror films and a spin-off television show, with a plot centered around attacks from subterranean worm-like creatures known as Graboids. It began in 1990 with the release of Tremors, which spawned a series of direct-to-video films and a television series. A second television series was ordered to air on Syfy, and a pilot was shot for the spring of 2018, but the project was ultimately cancelled.
The following is the filmography for American actor Kevin Bacon. His most notable roles have been in: National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), Diner (1982), Footloose (1984), Quicksilver (1986), White Water Summer (1987) She's Having a Baby (1988), Flatliners and Tremors, He Said, She Said and JFK, A Few Good Men (1992), The River Wild (1994), The Air Up There (1994), Murder in the First and Apollo 13, Sleepers (1996), Wild Things (1998), Stir of Echoes (1999), Hollow Man and My Dog Skip, Trapped (2002), Mystic River (2003), The Woodsman (2004), Death Sentence (2007), Frost/Nixon (2008), X-Men: First Class and Crazy, Stupid, Love, Black Mass (2015), Patriots Day (2016),The Darkness (2016) and MaXXXine (2024).
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special is an American television special written and directed by James Gunn for the streaming service Disney+, based on Marvel Comics featuring the superhero team Guardians of the Galaxy. It is the second Marvel Studios Special Presentation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), sharing continuity with the films and television series of the franchise. The special was produced by Marvel Studios, and follows the Guardians of the Galaxy as they celebrate Christmas and search for a present for their leader, Peter Quill.
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