Kevin Bacon facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Kevin Bacon
Bacon at the 2025 Tribeca Festival
Born	Kevin Norwood Bacon (1958-07-08) July 8, 1958 (age 67) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	Actor musician
Years active	1977–present
Works	Filmography
Spouse(s)	Kyra Sedgwick ​ (m. 1988)​
Children	2, including Sosie Bacon
Parent(s)	Edmund Bacon (father)
Relatives	Michael Bacon (brother)

Kevin Norwood Bacon (born July 8, 1958) is an American actor. He's famous for many different roles and has won important awards like the Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award.

Kevin Bacon first appeared in a movie called National Lampoon's Animal House in 1978. He also acted in Diner (1982) before becoming widely known for the musical movie Footloose in 1984. Since then, he has been in many popular movies like JFK (1991), A Few Good Men (1992), Apollo 13 (1995), Mystic River (2003), and Frost/Nixon (2008).

Other movies he has been in include Friday the 13th (1980), Tremors (1990), The River Wild (1994), Balto (1995), The Woodsman (2004), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), X-Men: First Class (2011), and Patriots Day (2016). Kevin Bacon has also directed two films: Losing Chase (1996) and Loverboy (2005).

On television, Bacon won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his role as Michael Strobl in the HBO movie Taking Chance (2009). He also starred in the Fox TV show The Following from 2013 to 2015. Bacon played the main role in the Amazon Prime Video series I Love ... from 2016 to 2017. From 2019 to 2022, he starred in the Showtime series City on a Hill.

In 2003, Kevin Bacon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Because he has acted in so many different types of movies, he is connected to a fun game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". He also works as a spokesperson for the British mobile company EE. Bacon is married to actress Kyra Sedgwick.

Early Life and Education

Kevin Bacon grew up in Philadelphia in a close family. He is the youngest of six children. His mother, Ruth Hilda, was an elementary school teacher and an activist. His father, Edmund Bacon, was a famous urban planner who helped design cities.

Bacon went to Julia R. Masterman School in Philadelphia for middle and high school.

When he was 16, in 1975, Bacon received a special scholarship to the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts at Bucknell University. This was a five-week program where he studied theater. This experience made him even more passionate about acting.

Acting Career Highlights

Starting Out in New York

At age 17, Kevin Bacon moved to New York City to become an actor. He appeared in a play at the Circle in the Square Theater School. He later said he wanted "the real thing" and believed that "art and creative expression are next to godliness."

His first movie, National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), didn't make him famous right away. Bacon went back to waiting tables and trying out for small theater roles. He also worked briefly on TV soap operas like Search for Tomorrow (1979) and Guiding Light (1980–81).

Becoming a Movie Star

In 1980, he appeared in the horror film Friday the 13th. He also performed in plays like Getting Out and Flux.

In 1982, he won an Obie Award for his role in a play called Forty Deuce. Soon after, he made his first appearance on Broadway in Slab Boys, alongside actors who would also become famous, like Sean Penn and Val Kilmer. However, it was his role as Timothy Fenwick in Barry Levinson's 1982 film Diner that really made people notice him.

After Diner, Bacon starred in Footloose (1984). To get ready for the role, Bacon pretended to be a new student named "Ren McCormick" at a high school to learn about teenagers. He received great reviews for his performance in Footloose.

Taking on Different Roles

After Diner and Footloose, Bacon found himself often playing similar types of characters. For a few years, he chose movies that were different from these roles, which he felt led to a bit of a career slowdown.

He had a small part in John Hughes's 1987 comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles. He then starred in another John Hughes comedy, She's Having a Baby (1988), and The Big Picture (1989).

Success in the 1990s

In 1990, Bacon had two successful roles. He played a character who saved his town from underground monsters in the comedy-horror film Tremors. He also played a medical student experimenting with death in Flatliners.

By 1991, Bacon decided to focus on being a "character actor" instead of always playing the main hero. This allowed him to work on bigger projects with famous directors. That year, he played Willie O'Keefe in Oliver Stone's JFK. He then played a lawyer in the military drama A Few Good Men.

In 1994, Bacon was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his role in The River Wild, where he acted alongside Meryl Streep. He described filming it as very tough, with everyone falling out of the boat at some point.

His next film, Murder in the First, earned him an award in 1995. That same year, he starred in the huge hit movie Apollo 13. Bacon played a darker role again in Sleepers (1996). This was very different from his role in the romantic comedy Picture Perfect (1997).

Bacon directed his first TV movie, Losing Chase (1996), which was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and won one. He also appeared in Digging to China and Telling Lies in America. As an executive producer for Wild Things (1998), Bacon also took a supporting role. He then starred in Stir of Echoes (1999).

Roles in the 2000s

Bacon at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival

In 2000, he appeared in Hollow Man. He also played the father in the family film My Dog Skip.

In 2003, Bacon acted with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins in Clint Eastwood's movie Mystic River. He was praised again for a serious role in The Woodsman (2004), for which he was nominated for best actor and received the Independent Spirit Award.

In 2005, Bacon was in the comedy film Beauty Shop with Queen Latifah. He appeared in the HBO Films movie Taking Chance (2009), which was based on a true story about a war veteran. The film came out on HBO in February 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 in this film.

Movies and TV in the 2010s

Bacon at the Toronto Film Festival in 2015

In 2010, it was confirmed that Bacon would appear in X-Men: First Class as the villain Sebastian Shaw. The film was released in 2011, the same year as the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love, where Kevin played a co-worker.

In 2012, Bacon was part of a special performance of Dustin Lance Black's play, 8. This play was a reenactment of a court trial about same-sex marriage in California. The performance was shown online to raise money for a good cause.

From 2013 to 2015, Bacon starred as Ryan Hardy in the FOX TV series The Following. In 2013, he won a Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television for this role. In 2015, he appeared in the crime film Black Mass, which starred Johnny Depp.

In 2015, he mentioned in an interview that he would like to return to the Tremors movie series. However, Bacon did not appear in Tremors 5: Bloodline (2015). He starred in Patriots Day in 2016, a movie about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Other Projects

In 1995, Kevin Bacon started a band called The Bacon Brothers with his brother, Michael. They have released seven albums. Bacon also sings in other ways; he has sung to his goats on Instagram and sings with the band the Old 97's in his role as himself in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.

Since 2012, Bacon has appeared in many advertisements for EE in the United Kingdom. These ads are based on the "Six Degrees" idea and his many movie roles. In 2015, he became a spokesperson for the U.S. egg industry.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Kevin Bacon in 2014

Kevin Bacon is the subject of a fun trivia game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". The idea is that because he has been in so many movies across different genres, any Hollywood actor can be connected to him in just a few steps. This game is based on the idea of six degrees of separation, which suggests that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by six or fewer steps.

At first, Bacon wasn't sure about the game, but it became a popular Internet meme. Eventually, he embraced it and started a charity called SixDegrees.org. This charity is a social networking service that aims to connect people and charities to help each other.

There's even a mathematical way to measure how close an actor is to Kevin Bacon, called the Bacon number. You can find this on websites like Oracle of Bacon. In 2012, Google even added a feature where you could search for an actor's name and "Bacon Number" to see their connection to Kevin Bacon, though this feature is no longer active.

A similar idea exists in math with the Erdős number, which connects mathematicians based on who they've written papers with. Some people have even combined these ideas to create the Erdős–Bacon number, which adds an actor's Bacon number and their Erdős number together.

Personal Life

Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon during The Best You Can premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival

Kevin Bacon has been married to actress Kyra Sedgwick since September 4, 1988. They met while working on a TV version of a play called Lemon Sky. He has said that meeting his wife and having children helped him during a difficult time in his career. Bacon and Sedgwick have acted together in several movies, including Pyrates, Murder in the First, The Woodsman, and Loverboy. They have two children, Travis Sedgwick (born 1989) and Sosie Ruth (born 1992). They live in Manhattan. Before marrying Kyra, Bacon was in a relationship with actress Tracy Pollan in the 1980s.

Bacon has spoken about the importance of the separation of church and state. He and Sedgwick appeared in will.i.am's music video "It's a New Day" after Barack Obama won the presidential election in 2008.

The couple lost some of their money due to a financial scam by Bernie Madoff.

In 2011, Bacon and Sedgwick learned on the PBS TV show Finding Your Roots that they are distant cousins. They also appeared in a video supporting women's reproductive rights.

Awards and Recognitions

Kevin Bacon has received many awards and honors throughout his career.

Awards and Nominations

Other Honors

Bacon's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

• In 2003, on September 30, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in movies.
• In 2004, he received the John Cassavetes Award at the Denver International Film Festival.
• In 2005, he received the Copper Wing Tribute Award at the Phoenix Film Festival.
• Also in 2005, he received the American Rivera Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
• In 2010, he was honored with the Joel Siegel Award by the Broadcast Film Critics Association.
• In 2015, he received the Career Achievement in Acting Award at the Seattle International Film Festival.

See also

In Spanish: Kevin Bacon para niños

• List of actors with Hollywood Walk of Fame motion picture stars