Kevin Bacon's Main TV Roles Show Character(s) The Following Ryan Hardy I Love Dick Dick The Wayne Brady Show Kevin Bacon

Main Movie Roles

BIOGRAPHY:

Kevin Norwood Bacon (born July 8, 1958) is an American actor and musician whose notable roles include National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), Diner (1982), Footloose (1984), She's Having a Baby (1988), Flatliners (1990), Tremors (1990), Wild Things (1998), JFK (1991), A Few Good Men (1992), The River Wild (1994), Murder in the First (1995), Apollo 13 (1995), Stir of Echoes (1999), Hollow Man (2000), Trapped (2002), Mystic River (2003), The Woodsman (2004), Death Sentence (2007), Frost/Nixon (2008), and X-Men: First Class (2011).

Bacon, one of six children, was born and raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Ruth Hilda Holmes, taught at an elementary school and was a liberal activist, while his father, Edmund Norwood Bacon, was a well-respected architect and a prominent Philadelphian who had been Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission for many years. At 16, in 1975, Bacon won a full scholarship to and attended the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts at Bucknell University, a state-funded five-week arts program at which he studied theatre under Dr. Glory Van Scott. The experience solidified Bacon's passion for the arts.

Bacon has won a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. He was named by The Guardian as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. In 2003, Bacon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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". 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). The family resides on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Bacon formed a band called The Bacon Brothers with his brother, Michael. The duo has released six albums.

He currently stars on the Fox television series The Following.


TRIVIA:

• Met wife 'Kyra Sedgwick' (qv) on the set of _Lemon Sky (1988) (TV)_ (qv).
• The family dog, a mutt, is called Paulie.
• Lives in NY with wife 'Kyra Sedgwick' (qv) and their 2 kids.
• Uncle of 'Neal Bacon' (qv).
• In preparation for his role in _Telling Lies in America (1997)_ (qv), he "hung out" in the radio studio with and based his on-air banter on his friend 'Jerry Blavat' (qv), the celebrated oldies DJ from Philadelphia and an inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; aka the "Geator with the Heater".
• (1995) Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#61).
• In _Quicksilver (1986)_ (qv) and _A Few Good Men (1992)_ (qv), his characters are both nicknamed "Smiling Jack".
• Inspired a game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", whereby people have to link any given actor to him by no more than six steps. For instance, to do 'Fred MacMurray' (qv), you could observe that MacMurray worked with 'Lee Marvin' (qv) in _The Caine Mutiny (1954)_ (qv), which is one step; and Marvin worked with 'Jane Fonda' (qv) in _Cat Ballou (1965)_ (qv), which is two steps; and Fonda worked with 'Jack Lemmon (I)' (qv) in _The China Syndrome (1979)_ (qv), which is three steps; and Lemmon worked with Bacon in _JFK (1991)_ (qv), which completes the link in four steps. Harder versions of the game exist, limiting the player to five, four or even three steps. The original version of this game existed for numerous years and the pivot-person was then 'Paul Erdös' (qv), a mathematician (one's Erdös number measures the number of people a scientist is away from having authored a paper with Dr. Erdös). A very few people, mostly scientists who have appeared in documentaries (such as 'Carl Sagan' (qv)), or actors who have also co-authored scientific papers (such as 'Danica McKellar' (qv) and 'Natalie Portman' (qv)), have both Erdös AND Bacon numbers.