Kevin Bacon Is Talking Fast And (Foot) Loose — Especially About The Work He’s Doing With SixDegrees.Org

Photo Credit: Frederic Auerbach

KEVIN BACON IS TALKING FAST AND (FOOT) LOOSE ABOUT THE GOOD HE’S DOING WITH HIS NONPROFIT, SIXDEGREES.ORG.

BY LAURA SCHREFFLER

PHOTOGRAPHY FREDERIC AUERBACH

STYLING MARK HOLMES

GROOMING BEATE PETRUCCELLI

SHOT ON LOCATION AT HOTEL PER LA, LOS ANGELES

Photo Credit: Frederic Auerbach

Let the record show: Kevin Bacon brings the party — even when he doesn’t mean to.

It’s the morning after our cover shoot at downtown LA’s Hotel Per La, and the ageless actor and I are midway through a morning Zoom session when the festivities begin. Thanks to the new iOS update, virtual balloons start to rain down around him. Then comes the confetti. Now we’re just missing cake, champagne, and Kenny Loggins.

“It’s the weirdest thing that’s happened to me lately,” the Golden Globe winner declares, protesting that he didn’t plan on turning our chat into a celebration. Sure, sure.

Perhaps Apple had a premonition of what was to come because, days later, after a nearly four month stand-off, the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike finally came to an end. Hollywood as a whole rejoiced, but no one did so, in my opinion, as perfectly or poignantly as Bacon. The 65-year-old actor didn’t need to tell the world of his happiness: he showed them by sharing a video of himself,  alone in an empty barn, clad in cowboy boots and worn denim, recreating his iconic dance from Footloose, the film that made him a household name, with the caption “Strike over! @sagaftra.”

Bacon’s post was, no doubt, both tongue-in-cheek and strategic. After all, 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of said Oscar-nominated movie, which revolves around Ren McCormack, a teenager from Chicago who moves to a small American town and attempts to overturn a ban on dancing. The overwhelming response to his TikTok only serves to prove that Footloose has withstood the test of time, steadily and surely convincing filmgoers to “kick off their Sunday shoes” since 1984.

Yet, with this video, Bacon was not only openly having fun, but also attempting to build some buzz for the greater good. Despite being temporarily thwarted by the strike, his plan to roll out a new initiative around the film’s milestone anniversary in support of his non-profit, SixDegrees.Org, remains intact. Come Giving Tuesday — a global day of philanthropy, held each year on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving — his 501c3, which supports youth empowerment, justice, equality, and sustainability, will be launching “BKxKB.” Here, essentials inclusive of snacks, books, writing tools, water, and more, will be provided to those in need, housed in nifty and useful backpacks. The goal is to create at least 40,000 of such kits, which he intends to be “bright spots in somebody’s day.”

This is the non-profit’s most recent effort, but Bacon has been steadily giving back via SixDegrees.Org since 2007, when he founded the organization after ceasing his overall dislike of the six degrees of Kevin Bacon concept (a parlor game created in 1994 by three Albright College students based on an interview he had given that same year when he mentioned that he had “worked with everybody in Hollywood or someone who’s worked with them.” In the game, players challenge each other to arbitrarily choose an actor and connect them to Bacon. It’s a nod to “six degrees of separation,” which posits that any two people are six or fewer acquaintance links apart.) It is a concept that, over time, Bacon clearly grew to love.

“I was hitting a spot in my life. I was reading the newspaper, looking at stuff going on in the world, and feeling overwhelmed with the issues. When I was young, I didn’t read the paper unless it had something about me in it, but when I got older and had children, I started to have more of an interest in the world and the issues we were facing, such as social justice and hunger, and I would get overwhelmed. I don’t remember if it was my wife or someone else, but [this person] said something that impacted me: taking action can be an antidote to helplessness.”

Photo Credit: Frederic Auerbach
He was already on a path to purpose, mulling over what philanthropic effort he could work on, when he opened his refrigerator and saw the late Paul Newman’s smiling face on a jar of pasta sauce. “I knew Paul, and was admiring of the charitable work that he did over the course of his life, and with it, the ability to take Newman’s Own and make it into something specific, taking his love of food and turning it into a force for good. He raised hundreds of millions of dollars for charity just by selling these products. So, I thought, What do I have that’s branded with me? I didn’t know exactly how to do this; it was all new to me. I tried SixDegrees.com, which was not available. And I know that it’s hard to imagine, but in 2007, the internet — and certainly social media — was relatively new to me. It was a world I didn’t know.”

When a friend suggested he create a .org, he had no idea what that even meant, or how to acquire one. But he was a quick learner, proving that there was something behind the beloved six degrees concept: he would meet someone at an event, who would recommend he speak to someone else. This led to him launching his non-profit at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

But first, he had to have a focus. “I’ve learned that if you are a celebrity, or somebody with a lot of money, and you want to support a cause, you’re probably better off picking one because then, your messaging is very clear. That has been both a blessing and a curse because there’s so much need and many things that could be better about the world we live in,” he notes, admitting, “Up until launching SixDegrees.Org, I had been showing up at charity events, making donations across the board to all different things. But again, I had to find a focus, and for me, it was connectivity. [There are] a lot of organizations that we support — we’re into grassroots mom and pop sort of organizations that don’t have a huge infrastructure behind them — focused on a bunch of different causes.”

The non-profit is built on the principle that everyone needs connection. It provides unsolicited grants to partners and individuals that seek to make change to their local communities; it curates convener campaigns to unite various catalysts to maximize their collective impact; and it uses the curated podcast he started this year, “Six Degrees with Kevin Bacon,” to tell the stories of those who are also trying to make change. Thus far, he’s spoken to actors like Matthew McConaughey, Mark Ruffalo, and Alexandra Daddario, as well as singers Thomas Rhett and Jewel, and New York Times best-selling author Phoebe Robinson, about their philanthropic efforts — social networking with a social conscience, as it were.

“I shoot the breeze with [the celebrity I’m speaking to for the] first half of the podcast, then we move on to the cause they have focused on, and then, to the person who runs their organization, or one they’re affiliated with. We give them a microphone to talk about the work they’re doing,” he says, sharing, “I like to talk to them about what it is that steered them toward philanthropic work. The podcast is a reflection of the work we’re doing with SixDegrees.Org.”

The 118-day strike gave Bacon time to assess how much still needed to be done, hence the new building kits initiative.
“At our board meetings, we always talk about how to quantify impact, but really, there’s no tangible number. I can tell you that we’ve certainly made an impact since we’ve grown the organization, but we try our best not to focus on a dollar amount because that’s not our focus,” he maintains, noting that he’d rather look at building awareness instead. During the pandemic, this was done via a viral campaign called #IStayHomeFor, based on the realization that going out and mingling could have a devastating result on loved ones. Social media became a powerful tool, where someone might say ‘I stay home for my grandmother’ or ‘I stay home for my sister-in-law, who’s a nurse.’

“You can’t quantify the monetary amount that came from those who took part, but you can say it had an impact,” he notes. [The world agrees: he received the 2010 Joel Siegel Award from the Critics Choice Association in recognition of not only his outstanding film career, but also his charitable work with the organization.] He adds, “I don’t think we’re going backward. People are listening to the podcast, and I [find it rewarding] when they come up to me and say, ‘I didn’t know about this issue’ or ‘I didn’t know about this organization.’ That’s something to feel good about.”

Photo Credit: Frederic Auerbach

Kevin Bacon is lucky, and he knows it.                                               

He is one of the few thespians who has had a different kind of creative outlet during the actor’s strike, which started on July 14. He’s musically minded in many ways and has a band with elder brother Michael — the appropriately-named The Bacon Brothers. They’ve released nine studio albums, the most recent being 2022’s Erato, with a sound they describe as “forosoco” (which also happens to be the title of their first album): a fusion of folk, rock, soul, and country.

“I’ve been lucky in that I have the band,” he admits, noting, “And while it’s not acting, it’s a performance. The creation of music, writing songs, getting in front of people and playing is creatively very satisfying to me. And as it turns out, we had a lot of show dates during the strike, and we’ve also been recording an album. The combination of those two things has been a godsend creatively.”

If The Bacon Brothers hadn’t existed, I think Sir Bacon would still have been fine. He has a farm in northwestern Connecticut where he and wife of 35 years, actress Kyra Sedgwick, raise horses, pigs, alpacas, chicken, and miniature goats — the latter making for an extremely gratifying audience.

He shares (whilst wearing a red plaid button-down flannel that only serves to amplify the farmer vibe) that he sings to said goats — an anniversary present for Sedgwick — and chooses songs he thinks they would like. Sometimes, his wife joins in, as well as their son, 34-year-old Travis, and daughter, 31-year-old Sosie.

No matter what happens in his career, Kevin Bacon will always be A-OK. He’s been acting for the better part of his life — first as “Chip” in the 1978 comedy National Lampoon’s Animal House — and is now embarking upon his fifth decade in the industry. It’s a monumental feat.

His career has leaped from strength to strength since he left his native Philadelphia to become the youngest student at Circle in the Square Theatre in New York, which led to major roles — one of which, Footloose, is responsible for launching his career. He has never looked back but has always maintained that same hunger for his craft as he had at the very beginning, a teenager with his parents’ support, hoping to take a major bite of the Big Apple.

“It’s who I’ve always been. I was a driven  kid, with a hunger in my belly and a strong work ethic. My parents always believed that you chop wood, carry water, roll up your sleeves, and get it done. You work. [That’s what I’ve taught my kids], and now, they feel the same way. And so does my wife. We’re not bad at being leisurely, but we all have a bit of a workaholic spirit in us, which the strike and the pandemic have certainly pointed out. We’ve been bouncing off the walls, wanting to do what we love to do, which is hit marks, put on costumes, sit in the makeup chair, and say lines. This is what we love to do.”

Photo Credit: Frederic Auerbach
His point is made through his extensive resume. Bacon has truly done it all, testing out different genres instead of sticking with just one tried-and-true favorite — everything from action thrillers and romantic comedies to heavy dramas and even the occasional musical. Some of the most notable include She’s Having a Baby; The Big Picture; Tremors; Flatliners; Frost/Nixon; Crazy, Stupid, Love; X-Men: First Class; Patriots Day; Oliver Stone’s JFK; Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men; The River Wild, for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination; Murder in the First, for which he was named Best Actor by the Critics Choice Association and received Best Supporting Actor nominations from The Screen Actors Guild; Ron Howard’s award-winning Apollo 13; Clint Eastwood’s Academy Award nominated film Mystic River; and The Woodsman, for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination. He made his directorial debut in 1996 with Losing Chase, which was honored with three Golden Globe Award nominations. It was followed by the 2005 film Loverboy and several episodes of his wife’s hit show, The Closer.

Small screen efforts include Joey [née Jill] Soloway’s Amazon series I Love Dick, which earned him a Golden Globe nod for Best Actor; his wife’s directorial debut, Story of A Girl, and her sophomore effort, Space Oddity; the Fox series The Following, and many more. There’s also stage work: he made his Broadway debut in 1983 with Sean Penn in Slab Boys, and starred in the 1986 production of Joe Orton’s Loot, followed by off-Broadway shows such as Album, Poor Little Lambs, and Getting Out. In 2002, he starred in An Almost Holy Picture, a one-man show written by Heather McDonald.

For a guy who has worked since he was 20, singing to goats — however entertaining — is not enough. “I can’t wait to get back to work,” he admits. Though he doesn’t share it, I know he had several films in the can pre-strike — including MaXXXine, the third and final installment in A24’s first major horror franchise films; the Blumhouse action horror series The Bondsman; the fourth installment of the Beverly Hills Cop series; Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley; Legendary Pictures’ The Toxic Avenger; and Netflix’s Leave the World Behind.

Now, speaking about his longevity in the industry, he says, “The passage of time is always a combination of mind-boggling and disturbing.”

As much as he’s glorified, and as much as six degrees of Kevin Bacon has stuck, he assures me that his career is much like any other. “There’s been so many ups and downs that I’m cynical about things. People will find it hard to believe since, from the outside, it seems like I’ve had so much success, but I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, in a funny kind of way. There’s been a tremendous number of misfires along the way, creatively, box office- or career-wise. The hard part for me is to stop and enjoy the moment when something is good, when a film does well, or when people respond to something in a positive way. Both Kyra and I have to remember to do that. It’s hard to live in the moment sometimes, but we’re trying to learn how to be more self-aware. It’s something I’ve worked on, where I’ll just stop, try to learn, and take an assessment of why I’m feeling that way.”

Photo Credit: Frederic Auerbach

Frequent meditation helps, as does grounding time with his family, be it at the Connecticut farm or at home in Los Angeles. “The simple act of creating a meal and sharing it together, whether it’s with family or friends, is a process that can be joyful,” he insists.

Another assist is refusing to look back, literally and figuratively. The latter, he’s still working on — the sting of any kind of failure for a professed workaholic isn’t the easiest thing to get over — but the former is a breeze. The only one of his films he’s even seen again in the past 30 years was Tremors, and only because he was trying to develop it into a TV series.
“People don’t believe this, but I don’t go back and look at [my films]. I can’t; I don’t know why.” Instead, when he thinks about his career and various projects, it’s less about the project itself and more about where he was in his life at the time — similar to a visual history of his life, love, and family. “Kyra and I will say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s when we were in Chicago doing that movie. You remember that funny place we stayed at?’ or, ‘Oh yeah, you were pregnant,’ or, ‘Remember when we had lunch with so-and-so?’ Whatever it is, it’s not about the movie itself,” he explains.

It occurs to me that, to outsiders, his life might seem strange. After all, it’s been spent predominantly in the public eye. He can document his most important moments with a visible timeline. But Bacon counters that, to him, this is his normal and it would be weirder to live a life without it, especially now after all these years, which I also understand.

“I’ve been doing this for so long and have been in the public eye for so long that I can’t imagine life without it,” he confesses. “And really, I’ve learned how to navigate it so that I don’t get too caught up in my own hype. I try not to value my own self-worth based on too many external things, like fame. Is my life normal? No, it’s not. It’s weird to others, but not weird to me anymore, because this is all I do. It’s hard to explain what it feels like, but it’s 99 percent great.”

Going back to that self-awareness, he says he looks at it as such whenever he’s feeling down, and reminds himself to be grateful. “I try to practice as much gratitude as I can, knowing that I have a job where I do what I love. I practice gratitude for the marriage and kids I have, and for being healthy.”

Which is the perfect time to segue into Bacon’s agelessness. I mean, the man is barely even grey. He certainly has that same, thick head of hair that his younger and more footloose self had. Even when it comes to skincare, Sedgwick’s attempts to improve his routine have mostly gone in one ear and out the other, so methinks he’s just genetically blessed.

“I’d love to chalk it up to clean living, and I’m not going to pretend that I don’t try to take care of myself, but my wife really tries. She’s constantly leaving me little skin routine products on my side of the sink — like age-defying, emulsifying shit, or a restoring lotion — and I’ll be like, Where’d this come from? But then I’ll think about it and go, Oh, of course. I know. I often ask her what she’s trying to say. [Bottom line] she’s always wanting me to keep up some kind of routine.”

Fair. Because whatever she’s doing is working — anyone can see that Bacon looks much younger than his 65 years. But in terms of how he feels, well, that’s a different story.

“If anything, I would say that, now, I’m less tolerant; I get bored easier. For instance, I’m genuinely tired of working out. I like the way it makes me feel, and I know it’s a good thing to do, especially as you get older. But then you read these things saying that you should work out harder the older you get and I’m thinking, I’ve been doing pushups for 50 years now. I’m over it. But I don’t want to fall into a mindset of not having anything new to learn, or any way to grow. That’s when you start dying. You come to a point in your life where, if you take one fork in the road, it leads to gratitude. If you take another fork in the road, it leads to bitterness. What I see oftentimes is that older people choose the road of bitterness. And that’s what really ages you, you know?”

What keeps Bacon young, in his opinion, is love, growth, change, and freedom; having a choice to do what he pleases and choosing to do things that feed his need for diversity. His next words sound very Breakfast Club-by (though, ironically, this is one film he didn’t star in), as he says, “When things come to me,  they don’t fall into a specific category. I don’t always get a specific trope in the cowboy or the funny guy or the nerd, [which is gratifying] because I’ve always worked hard to be able to play different kinds of parts. When I look at the stuff I have in the can right now and that I have on the horizon, they’re all different men. And to me, that is a win.”

He pauses momentarily, leans back, and briefly shuts his eyes before continuing with, “I don’t plan on pumping the brakes. I think a lot of people are thinking, ‘I’ll go a little easier now, I’ll do one movie a year or maybe I’ll retire.’ I’m not at that point yet. I’m very much focused. I feel like my best stuff, my biggest successes, are in front of me and not in the rear view.”

I don’t need to be six degrees from Kevin Bacon to know that whatever the man wants, the man gets. His past is only evidence of his future: he knows as well as I do that he has always had all the right moves.

Photo Credit: Frederic Auerbach