60 Fun Facts About Kevin Bacon

In which city was Kevin Bacon born and raised?

He left home at 17 for New York theater; his hometown later hosted the first Bacon Brothers gig at the Theatre of Living Arts.

Kevin Bacon is the youngest of how many children?

His mother Ruth was an elementary school teacher and liberal activist; his brother Michael is his bandmate.

Bacon's father, Edmund Bacon, was famous in what profession?

As executive director of Philadelphia's City Planning Commission he shaped Penn Center and Society Hill, and wrote the classic text Design of Cities.

Bacon made his feature film debut in which 1978 comedy?

Fame did not follow; he went back to waiting tables and did stints on the soaps Search for Tomorrow and Guiding Light.

In which 1980 slasher film did Bacon play a camp counselor?

His character Jack meets his end with an arrow through the throat from below the bunk while Marcie is in the bathroom.

How is Bacon's camp-counselor character Jack killed in the 1980 slasher?

Ned's corpse is already lying in the bunk above him and Marcie at the time, one of the film's most imitated shocks.

Bacon made his Broadway debut in Slab Boys alongside which two then-unknown actors?

Two decades later he would send up his own game on Will & Grace by connecting himself to Kilmer via Tom Cruise.

For which 1982 play did Bacon win an Obie Award?

He also performed Getting Out and Flux in New York around the same time, before Diner changed his career.

Which character did Bacon play in Barry Levinson's Diner (1982)?

The role, alongside Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke and Ellen Barkin, made critics take notice and led straight to Footloose.

What is the name of Bacon's character in Footloose?

He is a Chicago kid who moves to a small town where dancing has been banned.

How did Bacon prepare for his Footloose role?

He used his character's name, studied the teenagers, then left in the middle of the day.

Footloose is loosely based on a real dancing ban in which Oklahoma town?

The town had banned dancing since 1898 to curb heavy drinking; the film moves the story to fictional Bomont, Utah.

Which two actors were slated for the Footloose lead before Bacon?

Producers loved Cruise's Risky Business underwear dance but he was busy with All the Right Moves; Lowe auditioned three times.

How many doubles did Bacon say he had for the famous warehouse dance in Footloose?

A stunt double, a dance double and two gymnastics doubles, by his own count.

Who played the dance-banning Reverend Shaw Moore in Footloose?

Dianne Wiest played his wife Vi and Lori Singer their daughter Ariel, a part Madonna also auditioned for.

Which Deniece Williams song from Footloose was nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar?

Kenny Loggins's title song was nominated too; both lost to Stevie Wonder's 'I Just Called to Say I Love You'.

Bacon had a cameo in which 1987 John Hughes comedy?

He is the man who beats Steve Martin to the taxi. He then starred in Hughes's She's Having a Baby the following year.

In which 1990 movie did Bacon's character save a desert town from underground 'graboid' monsters?

Reba McEntire made her acting debut in it; the franchise later spawned six direct-to-video sequels without him.

In Joel Schumacher's Flatliners (1990), Bacon plays a medical student who does what?

He, Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland stop their own hearts to glimpse the afterlife and bring back more than they bargained for.

Which character did Bacon play in Oliver Stone's JFK (1991)?

Taking the small role of a gay prostitute was part of his deliberate 1991 shift from leading man to character actor in 'A' pictures.

In A Few Good Men (1992), Bacon played what role in the courtroom?

He faced off against Tom Cruise's defense while Jack Nicholson's Colonel Jessup took the stand.

Bacon earned a 1994 Golden Globe nomination for The River Wild opposite which actress?

He called it a grueling shoot in which every cast member fell out of the boat at some point and had to be rescued.

Which real astronaut did Bacon play in Apollo 13 (1995)?

Swigert was the backup command module pilot who replaced Mattingly days before launch; Bacon flips the fateful oxygen-tank stir switch.

Who directed Apollo 13?

Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris co-starred in the docudrama, adapted from Jim Lovell's book Lost Moon.

What was Bacon's directorial debut, a 1996 television film?

It was nominated for three Golden Globes and won one; his second film as director, Loverboy, came in 2005.

On the 1998 thriller Wild Things, Bacon took a supporting role and also served as what?

He followed it with the ghost story Stir of Echoes, directed by David Koepp.

Who directed Hollow Man (2000), in which Bacon's scientist Sebastian Caine turns himself invisible?

Most of the roughly $95 million budget went to the visual effects that peel Bacon away layer by layer.

Who directed Mystic River (2003), in which Bacon starred with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins?

Penn and Robbins both won Oscars; Bacon played state police detective Sean Devine.

Which actor was first cast as Det. Sean Devine in Mystic River before leaving the film?

He had already done script readings and researched the Massachusetts State Police before departing.

In the acclaimed 2004 drama The Woodsman, Bacon played what kind of character?

The role earned him an Independent Spirit nomination for best actor; his wife co-starred and the Bacon Brothers contributed a song.

Bacon won a Golden Globe for playing Marine Lt. Col. Michael Strobl in which 2009 HBO film?

Strobl escorts the body of a fallen Marine home; the film also earned Bacon a SAG Award and ten Emmy nominations overall.

Which mutant villain did Bacon play in X-Men: First Class (2011)?

Working with James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender handed both a Bacon number of 1, and Ian McKellen a Bacon number of 2.

What was the name of Bacon's former FBI agent in the Fox series The Following?

He spends three seasons hunting James Purefoy's cult-leading serial killer; the role won him a 2013 Saturn Award.

Which actor played serial killer Joe Carroll opposite Bacon in The Following?

Carroll is an English professor obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe who builds a cult of killers from prison.

City on a Hill, the Showtime series starring Kevin Bacon as a corrupt FBI veteran, was based on whose story?

Bacon played Jackie Rohr in 1990s Boston for three seasons before the show was cancelled in 2022.

Students at which Pennsylvania school invented Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon in 1994?

Craig Fass, Brian Turtle and Mike Ginelli wrote to Jon Stewart declaring Bacon 'the center of the entertainment universe'.

The game's inventors got the idea after watching Footloose back to back with which other Bacon film?

During the second film they started counting how many movies he had made and how many people he had worked with.

What is Kevin Bacon's own Bacon number?

Anyone who has appeared in a film with him scores 1; Elvis Presley, via Ed Asner and JFK, is a 2.

How did Bacon initially react to the Six Degrees game?

He came around, wrote the introduction to the inventors' book, and in 2007 launched the charity SixDegrees.org.

In 2012 which search engine added a feature that showed any actor's 'Bacon Number'?

The feature has since been switched off, but the Oracle of Bacon website still computes the numbers.

The Erdős–Bacon number adds a Bacon number to one named for a prolific figure in which field?

Paul Erdős co-wrote papers with hundreds of colleagues; his own Erdős number is 0, just as Bacon's Bacon number is.

With which family member did Bacon form the band The Bacon Brothers in the mid-1990s?

They have released seven albums and even sing the title track on Sandra Boynton's children's album Philadelphia Chickens.

The Bacon Brothers' 1997 debut album was titled Forosoco. What is the word derived from?

It is how the brothers describe their own genre mix.

Whom did Bacon marry in September 1988?

They met on the set of a PBS production of Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky and have co-starred in Pyrates, Murder in the First and The Woodsman.

In 2011, Bacon and his wife learned on PBS's Finding Your Roots that they are what?

Henry Louis Gates delivered the news to the couple, who had by then been married for more than twenty years.

Bacon and his wife lost part of their savings in the Ponzi scheme run by which swindler?

Bacon has said the low point coincided with meeting his wife and having children, which gave him strength.

In 2012 Bacon began fronting a Six Degrees-themed ad campaign for which UK mobile network?

In 2015 he also became a spokesman for the US egg industry, an inevitable pairing.

Bacon's wife is best known for playing Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on which crime drama?

The role won her a Golden Globe in 2007 and an Emmy in 2010; she directed Bacon and their daughter Sosie in her 2017 film Story of a Girl.

Before marrying, Bacon had a five-year relationship in the 1980s with which actress?

Pollan went on to marry Michael J. Fox in 1988, the same year Bacon married.

In The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Bacon plays himself and sings with which band?

He has also serenaded his goats on Instagram; the special features his wife too.

What is the title of the podcast he launched in 2020?

It followed SixDegrees.org, the charity he founded in 2007 to link people and causes.

Bacon's father Edmund authored which seminal text on urban form?

Edmund Bacon ran the Philadelphia City Planning Commission; Kevin's mother Ruth was an elementary teacher and activist.

On which daytime soap opera did Bacon work in 1980–81, between Animal House and Diner?

He had also done a stint on Search for Tomorrow in 1979 while waiting tables and auditioning for stage roles.

In which 2005 comedy did Bacon appear alongside Queen Latifah?

The same year he and Kyra Sedgwick both appeared in Loverboy, his second film as director.

Bacon played the title role in which Amazon Prime Video series from 2016 to 2017?

He followed it with three seasons of Showtime's City on a Hill from 2019 to 2022.

Bacon met his future wife on the set of a PBS version of which Lanford Wilson play?

The couple later starred together in Pyrates, Murder in the First, The Woodsman and Loverboy.

In 2015 Bacon became a commercial spokesperson for which US industry?

His UK ad work for the mobile network EE, built around the Six Degrees idea, began three years earlier.

At 16, Bacon won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, held at which university?

The five-week programme in Lewisburg, where he studied theatre under Glory Van Scott, cemented his ambition to act.

In which 2016 film about the Boston Marathon bombing did Bacon star?

A year earlier he had appeared in the Whitey Bulger crime drama Black Mass.

Which actor starred in the 2015 crime film Black Mass, in which Bacon also appeared?

Bacon had said the same year that he would like to return to the Tremors franchise, but sat out Tremors 5.