Through just six steps, anyone in Hollywood is linked to Kevin Bacon in some way or another. So goes the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. But recently, Kevin Bacon himself tried to shed all connection to his identity, donned a disguise, and lived in total anonymity—and got quite the learning experience out of it.
66-year-old Bacon is known as the quintessential leading man and character actor and has been active in the industry since 1977. In fact, nearly five decades later, he’s still as busy as ever, with Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F and MaXXXine both out this year. But he put just as much effort into disappearing into the crowd for a day of utter normalcy, and he doesn’t have high praise for what he experienced.
Kevin Bacon wore an elaborate disguise to live life as a normal person
Last week, Bacon spoke with Vanity Fair about his near-universal fame and the great measures he took to experience a totally normal, incognito day.
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“I went to a special effects makeup artist,” he shared, “had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise.”
Then, he put this concealment to the ultimate test at The Grove, one of the busiest commercial centers in Los Angeles. All the makeup did its job. Remarkably, “nobody recognized” Bacon.
At first, there was delight—the triumph of a mission accomplished and a taste of normalcy achieved at last. Then, reality set in.
The ‘Footloose’ star quickly experienced the downside of not being everyone’s idol
“People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice,” Bacon recounted of his time in disguise. “Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a f—ing coffee or whatever.” He added, “I was like, This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.”
On the podcast Podcrushed, Bacon shared more details concerning his complicated feelings when it comes to fame. A significant part of it stems from his desire to be a serious actor playing serious roles. “When I became a pop star, the last thing I wanted to be was a pop star,” he explained.
He went on, “I had already moved into, you know, ‘I want to be Dustin Hoffman or Meryl [Streep] or John Cazale or [Robert] De Niro. I want to work with [Martin] Scorsese. I want to do Chekhov.”
In fact, Bacon would take it as a compliment if people have visceral reactions to his characters, seeing it as a testament to his performance. “I don’t need you to go to a movie and love me,” said Bacon, “If you go to a movie like ‘MaXXXine’ or ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,’ and I die and you stand up and cheer, I’m like, ‘Great. That was my gig. That’s what I wanted out of it.’”
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