Kevin Bacon Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

it's awesome it's like the coolest puppet I wanted to take them home national food animals National Lampoon's Animal House was my very very first movie I was an acting student in New York and I didn't have an agent I was probably about 18 I think maybe the casting director did something that was sort of unusual where they went to the school and asked the people that ran the school if they had any suggestions for college students wet-behind-the-ears I remember them remember that being in a description and they sent me over and I met John Landis and there was a word that was used either in the in this in the script or maybe in the in the way they described the character in the audition which was smarmy and it's not a word that I was familiar with I didn't know what it meant but I thought to myself I can kind of think of what smarmy might mean so I just made a face that was what I thought maybe smarmy was and John lands is like I love that I love that smarmy do the smart thing and that's the part and it just kind of blew my mind but a lot of outstanding guys figure they'll pledge Omega or they won't pledge at all well sure everybody I talked to says Omega is the best I hate to seem you know pushy I was working as a waiter at the time and so I quit my job and I went out and you know spent I guess five weeks having this magical kind of experience making making a movie and the whole thing was pretty overwhelming when I came back to New York I thought to myself that's it baby I am set I'm a I'm a movie star and then I didn't work on I didn't work for months and months and months after that and so I had to get my job back at the restaurant so when the movie actually came out I was a waiter and I had to ask for the night off to go to the premiere premier was someplace in Times Square and when I got there I saw the rest of the cast who most of them have lived in California and they'd flown the rest of the cast and and there was a red red carpet and there was the the red rope and I was on the other side of it because there was a kind of a hierarchy of what kind of tickets you got or something like that and I just had the the tickets to the to the premiere it was actually a kind of a super super humbling kind of night for me you know I mean funny in retrospect but at the time I was sort of horrified because I figured that I was you know one of the stars we technically wasn't Footloose Footloose definitely was a breakthrough all it was a turning point in part that was like one of those life-changing kind of things where like all of a sudden you go from being an actor that some people know to being you know a pop star at that point in my life you know when I when I first you know wanted to become an actor I really wanted to be a pop star that's really one of the reasons that I did it but by that point in my life I'd studied so much and I take done so much theater and I'd taken this thing so seriously that there was a last thing in the world I wanted to be in retrospect I could have embraced it you know a little bit more but it was a great opportunity we were out in Utah you know in a completely Mormon community all living it at a motel together the cast the the physical challenges of you know learning you know as much of these dance moves as I could and and and some of the gymnastics and all that kind of stuff I remember when I got the part I said to the director listen you know I see that there's these dance things in here you could get a choreographer if you want to but like I'd like to dance why you just turn on the camera I'll just dance around I had no idea that it was going to be like this kind of choreographed thing I just didn't get that I thought it was just like they they just said oh the kid just dances around [Music] I had so many doubles during that warehouse it was really like it was like a real identity crisis because I had a dance double that I had I think two gymnastic doubles who did different sorts of things one guy could do one flip oh my god you could do with something else and then I also had a stunt double after a while you kind of go why am I even here like I mean somebody got to come in and double me on the acting I saw a funny warehouse scene parody who was it hot rod that's where it was yeah yeah yeah Sam yeah exactly any sane program yeah that's right in the forest that's a great I saw that I love that that was hilarious it was so good I totally I knew that too I really thought it was so good I saw the remake and you know frankly I think the dancing and the remake is better than the dancing in the original you know because the thing about the thing about Footloose the movie was that I was not a trained dancer nor was Chris Penn or Laurie singer or really any of the cast I mean I guess Sarah Jessica Parker maybe had done some dancing but but but in in the remake of Footloose those are the answers I mean though they cast dancers so so their dancing ability is kind of way beyond mine it was a great opportunity and I look back fondly on the on the movie for sure x-men first class just right off the bat the whole idea of the Marvel kind of the world and you know these guys come these be kind of nerdy guys come and they've got this giant stack of every single time that the character has ever been mentioned already every single you know cell that you've ever seen of him throughout all the history of the x-men comic books and and so I'm like wow okay so this is my research it is kind of fun to have that to dig into that and that Vaughn is a real interesting character the guy that directed the movie you know takes a long time and it's it's kind of painstaking in in the sense of you know you're you're really at the mercy of effects and and and certainly there's a lot of cooks when it comes to doing it's almost right in that big a check you know but you know I got to say I did my superhero movie then didn't insane Nishi be texts she's fish tastes - eins mama yes spy I'll assist booth drive yeah boom bah bah I had to learn German and for that scene and then after I did the German scene that said to me you know you got that scene where you talking to the Russian guys haven't you speak Russian and that I was like ok the German was hard enough may I ask you something why are you on their side yeah that was probably about three or four days in a completely green room because all those mirrors and stuff were all created you know Michael is yeah it's a great actor and frankly in some ways those scenes were in some ways easier for me because at least we had stuff you know we had good stuff to play you know and I loved you know going through that with him it was it was it was good I don't wanna hurt you her I never did I would help you this is our time our age we are the future of the human race tremors when I got tremors my wife was pregnant with our first child and my mom was sick and my career I felt was in the app absolutely and I was running out of money and feeling like a lot of pressure I remember just kind of talking to my wife and we were having a conversation and almost like just kind of like breaking down you know on on about 89th of Broadway I'd say to her can't believe I'm doing a movie about underground worms there's the only character that really that I've ever played that I really wanted to go back and revisit I was really proud to have been in it and back in those days there were these things that you kids don't know about they're called video tapes and video was exploding and tremors was one of the first movies that took a at the box office and just exploded on video we killed it when they came to me about doing tremors - I was like I'm not gonna do tremors - termos one was a bomb you know I don't I don't want to do a part two of a movie that didn't do well the first time around you know they ended up making eight of those diner in 98 - yeah I got this movie diner which was one of the greatest experiences I think of my you know acting life and and I had an agent finally by that point and they were casting a pretty wide net because they had to put together this this group of young men in their 20s and they had what five five roles that were available so the process was like this you you you went in and I guess we we got a chance to read the script and then pick the part that you wanted to audition for I immediately had two ideas one was boogie which was a part that Mickey Rourke ended up doing because boogie was like super cool he was tough and he was you know kind of a badass and I thought well that's that's cool I want to do that and the other was Billy which is the part that Tim Daly did because he was a romantic and there was some you know kind of romance involved in girls and I thought well that's that's that's the other thing that I would want to give a shot and I wondered and I read both of those for Barry Levinson and Barry said go ahead go out go out and look at fed work and I was kind of disappointed because I didn't really have a handle on that work if Emily didn't have a lot of line and I went back in and I got the call back and I had about a hundred and four fever I was really sick with the flu but it was the only day there was no you know there was no choice to come back nothing so I think that part of what got me the part was the flu because the character who finally really kind of discovered when I was talking to Barry about it was that he has a low level of drunk throughout the whole thing so really I was just like you know kind of just sort of out of it anyway I took that with the flu on that sleepers part of being an actor is being able to tap into our darker side this is a side that you know I think I think all of us as human beings we have pain anxiety fear extreme you know thoughts and and and desires but we just don't act on them generally you know we just have these kind of feelings that sometimes infiltrate our minds or our brains or what waking or our subconscious and you just have to be able to not be afraid of that sort of as an actor and and I actually find that going to dark places is sort of therapeutic in a way because it kind of I've been able to like purge myself of you know sad fearful angry violent kind of you know feelings as opposed to pressing them down pressing down pressing them down pressing down it's it's an outlet so this character is not unlike that you know Barry Levinson directed me a diner came back to me many years later and one of the few people that never hired me twice and had me read the book as I'm reading this book I'm seeing and there's all these cool guys you know that ended up being played by Brad Pitt and Billy Crudup and on and on I'm like huh that's not that part you know it's not that for its good coming up soon no it's not that far oh it's the abusive you know prison guard great okay now I know Nokes all I had to do is look at the name ago I know what he wants me to do scared shitless why I tried to make you tough I tried to make you hard why had you all wrong then that's all this time I thought you just liked and beating up little boys you two are gonna burn in hell you can burn in hell f tu oh did that hurt knows I've been squid before but I'd never had seven squibs a squib is basically you know it's a it's a it's a little it's gunpowder it's a little charge but it's it's like it's like a gunshot that goes off of you as opposed to in you in theory they put seven of them on and there's a little blood pack so that it you know pops open they said something about wearing a bulletproof vest and I was like but aren't they supposed to go out this way but there were I did have some some not not not life-threatening but there definitely were some burns on my chest after that after that I think I remember that being a pretty cool scene I had a funny experience with one of those kids where I got to this television show sitting on a hill and and here's this guy's all grown up and I'm looking at am I gonna heck I looks familiar he was one of the kids Jonathan Tucker yeah he was in sleepers when he was probably about I don't know 10 11 something like that you know and now he's I'm trying to put him away you know in the he's a bank robber so it's cool great actor action I'll tell you when you're hungry or that eat listen you know I'm not afraid I'm not I'm not afraid to play in anything I'm really not you know if I think it's good and interesting and and I haven't done it before I'll do it phew goodness you good men was you know beautiful perfect kind of script from Aaron Sorkin that had been a play and there were a few different roles that I was kind of looking at in that script and and my wife is the one that's said to me you gotta play this guy he's a good guy's a stand-up guy to me you know I'm often like drawn to the darker kind of characters and I'm afraid sometimes that if somebody's just stand up and goes follows a straight and narrow that's just not gonna be interesting but she was absolutely right did you ever actually hear lieutenant Kendrick order a Code Red no sir please the court I'd like to request a recess in order to confer with my client why did you go into Santiago's right the witness has been read his rights commander the question will be repeated why on earth antiag o--'s room hell did Lance Corporal Dawson tell you to give Santiago a Code Red how don't look at him shooting with Robin with Tom and to me and Nicholson you know I'm getting to to work with Jack it was such a kind of hero of mine you know when I was deciding to become an actor his performances were very very influential to me because he was probably the first actor that I ever saw that you could tell he just didn't he could play the lead and still not give a if anybody liked them or not you know he had no problem it's not like he was trying to be handsome or dynamic or charming or chemistry or be likable you could just see that he just didn't care you know the movie was almost like doing a play because we rehearsed it on a soundstage with while the set was being built with the set sort of taped out and the props and all this kind of stuff and we rehearsed it in in a fairly you know theatrical way and when we got to actually shooting it Rob was so well prepared and everything was so well broken down at his head that the days were really flowed you know it's it's we didn't have any crazy long days and we'd have nice you know lunches in his office and we would spend time together on the weekends and stuff it was a pleasure to make that one Flatliners Flatliners was a really interesting idea and Joel Schumacher was kind of the top of his game at that time and joy Roberts was just exploding I mean it was literally like I think during shooting or something like that pretty woman came out and she just became an absolute superstar it was one of those ones where you you know even though we weren't kids you put a bunch of us together and the end the hours were long and you've got Oliver Platt and Kiefer and Julie and Billy Baldwin anion and for such a dark movie there was a lot of laughs I mean to the point where sometimes we couldn't actually pull it together and then you get in trouble Friday the 13th Friday the 13th you know listen that was it was another iconic film because it was the very first one we shot the movie in Blair's town New Jersey which was you know on the other side of the George Washington Bridge and kind of out in the sticks and there was no transportation I think they would drop me off on the way back at a bus stop and I'd have to get the bus stop and try to get get back to Manhattan I was doing a play down in the village so every day I would shoot I'd be like terrified that I was gonna miss the missed the half-hour and the curtain for the for the show downtown and probably did a couple of times I had the classic horror movie death in that because I had sex and then smoked the joint and as soon as that happens to somebody in a horror movie especially if they're you you know a young person they're dead I would say the number one photograph that shoved in front of me by by fans to sign is a photograph of me dead from Friday 13th I've got the arrow coming through my throat and I'm covered in blood and it's always been a little strange to me that what people really want is for me to sign a picture of me dead well first off meryl streep to me is the greatest American actor and the actor that if I could name any actor that I would aspire to be like it would be her because she is so transformational of course the not surprisingly she's the person that will put everybody at ease like immediately and make you feel like all of our jobs are important i love john c reilly James for Theron I mean a fantastic group of people to be working with and we had the challenges of this incredible physical kind of thing to go down this river again and again and again and again and we're shooting in Montana and we were supposed to go to Oregon but Oregon would not let us bring helicopters into the sections of the river we wanted to shoot that were designated Wild and Scenic so the director decided that we would stay for another month two months in this tiny town called Libby Montana and there was a section of this river that was completely Kootenai River it was completely unnavigable it was just a series of waterfalls you couldn't take a raft down there you would never survive and that's the section that we used it was often terrifying I'm not gonna lie I mean you know we got to the point where once we had been thrown from the boat and I survived the rapid it made it a little bit easier in a way because you kind of knew that it was possible to survive and you know we were training we had training and stuff like that but they experimented with having they built a life mask that they would then glue on to the stuntman and like a of both of me and Johnse but it didn't work because basically what you have is this this doesn't look like anything so you can't really use it you know there's a couple of moments where there's probably some doubles but it was pretty much us all the time Apollo 13 Apollo 13 was an incredible experience the research that goes into trying to figure out how to throw astronaut terminology around that's not the way my brain sort of works Tom Hanks I think actually could probably fly the space shuttle at this point if he wanted to because he was really was a space freak and knew a lot about it the late great Bill Paxton was was in that and we spent a lot of time with the three of us in a capsule you know and had an amazing time the most amazing thing about doing Apollo 13 was that there's an airplane called the kc-135 that nASA uses in order to train astronauts in zero-gravity there's no way to duplicate gravity on earth except for flying out over the Gulf of Mexico and climbing straight up and then diving and as you go over the top of this dive the centrifugal force and the gravitational pull balance out for 26 seconds so you can see what it feels like to float we were gonna try to do it with like you know harnesses and the usual stuff which you know nowadays would be really really easy but back then making it look good the technology was nowhere near where we're right now we're on Howard came to us and said so guys I would speak talking to Spielberg it's be a blur said to me why don't you just shoot when he just build the set on the kc-135 and you can shoot up there on the Vomit Comet they called the vomit calm because it's incredibly nauseating sure enough that's what we did we did we did it 600 times hey we've got a problem here what did you do nothing I stirred the tanks whoa this is Houston say again please houston we have a problem we would go up at lunch with the camera crew kind of a minimal camera crew the set was built there and we would just shoot all of the weight in those weightless scenes and we do probably 40 in the morning out to out turn around and do 40 back land have lunch go back to do 40 and 40 back and get about 80 a day and that's that's how we got all over the weightless footage we did the fun way yeah for sure I took the part kind of because of the scene where I'm sitting on the bench with the little girl because I thought to myself if I can make this moment work then I can back the whole movie up from there and I thought it was so well written and so chilling a moment the kinds of characters that they are the darkness that they they feel are the things that they've done I don't I'm not scared of it you know and I don't worry about well that's gonna make me look bad make Kevin look bad to me that's the difference between an actor and a movie star or a celebrity my daddy lets me sit on his lap does he yes do you like it when he asks you know why not one of the things that I think is is important about that part is that so often you'll hear it when when people discuss things on the news or they talk about or they write reviews or they used this is a line that's often used in in dialogue they'll call people monsters that guy's a monster this one's a monster that was a monstrous thing monsters are not frightening because they're not real you know monsters like are the things that comes in and a guy has a laser gun adapted right if there were really monsters and the girl would call superhero these are people human beings so to me it was really about trying to humanize something that is repulsive and and so such a hot-button issue for for for us as viewers as parents I mean that was what was important to me about doing the film was to try to see if I could make this guy the human being Holloman seems like an easy gig gig invisible man right because you know have to learn any lines no you have to learn the lines you ghosts don't have to be there I thought to myself this is gonna be the world's easiest gig because I'll just say it in post and it became pretty clear to me pretty early that it was actually going to be incredibly hard and it was it was probably the hardest thing I've ever done I was the green-screen so I was covering green and green giant green contact lenses green green makeup green teeth and then a green suit and it was just really hard to wear that from month after month after month and then I had to wear a once I poured the latex over my head that thing had to be glued to my mouth and I couldn't eat all day and I found that to be a very very challenging very talented [Music] authorization please okay zero zero two seven confirmed thank you I can't let you leave sorry babe you don't have a choice mr. Griffin for me was without a doubt one of the most fun experiences I've ever had we got an opportunity to work with Clint who was one of the greats both as an iconic movie star and also as a as a film director and there's nobody that has really when you compare it has that kind of superstardom as an actor at the same time started directing when he was a very very young man and direct film after filming must be must be up to 35 thumbs up or something like that no and you know even really successful directors don't get a chance to direct 35 films if they're just directors and he's an actor too I mean it's he's really remarkable we all realized really quickly that there was no rehearsal and sometimes Clinton would shoot the first take and that would be it you'd move on or he'd shoot the rehearsal or he'd just turned the camera on and wouldn't tell anybody the camera was on we had to come to work with the game Jersey on a hundred percent ready to go and we started to have our own rehearsals believed we would go up to somebody's room at the hotel we were all staying at and it was it was also he shoots so quickly that there was a lot of time in the bar and probably too much but we had a blast it was really a fun it was a fun show dark was the dark day yeah that was that was a dark day but again you know Sean came so ready to play that and Clint rate came so ready with how he wanted to shoot it but it's not like like when everyone is that well-prepared both on the acting side of things the emotion that you have to put yourself through is you know there's gonna be an end to it because you know this day is not gonna last forever so it's when it's really hard as when you feel like the director doesn't know he's like yeah dude that a kid you like I just I was just I just put it all I just left it all on the field and now you want me to do it again well I didn't quite get this angle or you know I mean it's like that custom there's none of that so yeah it was it was dark it was a dark day but you know yeah everybody got through [Applause] [Music] [Applause] yeah we have it that that was one of those scenes where we had to get down on the ground and have this kind of like wrestling match and somebody started to laugh and holy we could not get through it we were laughing so hard because it just was strangely like intimate you know because we were all rolling around together excuse me Emily left her sweater in my car the other night Oh who are you I'm David Lynn hug baby Lynn Hagen David okay is this a bad time yeah not much pain and suffering you caused my friend I just remember it being one of those like thank you everyone's laughing and then tips and then you start to see the producers like a looking at their watches and the directors starting to get a little irritated and you know but but yeah it was fun I had a good time the following the thing about the following was is it up until that point I I was completely opposed to doing television at all I came up at a time when television was kind of like the that's where he went to when your career died that's where you went to have your career die basically you know all of a sudden I realized that the idea to be able to you know expand on a character over multiple seasons was really kind of fun I mean we're not gonna see that a movie script you know I'm only gonna have so many scenes to tell the story of who this man is Mike Ryan back off don't don't do this cause you're better than this Mike your good man put the gun down take me into custody you're on Lily I used to be Valen was a very intense show to shoot I would have dark you know up dreams and it put me in the dark place see beyond a city on a hill is a television show on Showtime that I that I play a character named Jackie Brewer who is another FBI agent who's corrupt and nothing he there's never a scene the Jackie is in where he doesn't isn't doing something despicable or saying something inappropriate or stabbing somebody in the back or taking money under the table or doing drugs or drinking or philandering Jackie brought FBI you mind if I call you Dee no I haven't rain Ramos when I want to talk to you about you got a kid roach on your dog and he's an informant of mine he's working a decent case he always was shot a cop well he allegedly shot a cop it's a great part it's a great part you should have left [Music] you should have left is a story that is based on a German book that my friend Dave and I optioned and it was kind of one of those strange serendipitous things where we were developing a story about a horror horror scary kind of movie that surrounds a marriage and happened to read this this German book and it was so close to where we were already were in our discussions about what this film could be that we were kind of better off just getting you know getting an option on the book which is what we did and Dave is a fantastic writer and had directed me years ago in stir of echoes which was one of my favorite movie experiences in a really really excellent scary movie coming out and I don't know I've seen him over the fall

Channel: GQ

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Rating: 4.909461 out of 5

Keywords: celebrity, iconic, kevin bacon, iconic characters, kevin bacon 2019, kevin bacon interview, kevin bacon gq, kevin bacon movies, kevin bacon character, kevin bacon iconic characters, kevin bacon movie, kevin bacon characters, kevin bacon footloose, kevin bacon tremors, kevin bacon animal house, kevin bacon x-men, kevin bacon a few good men, kevin bacon apollo 13, kevin bacon flatliners, kevin bacon the river wild, kevin bacon the woodsman, footloose, tremors, gq, gq magazine

Id: do1n5I5az_4

Length: 37min 56sec (2276 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/crispin2015]

Kevin hasn’t always been in the best films but he has always been a great actor. My favorite is still his role as Valentine McKee in Tremors

[u/[deleted]]

The Following was a really underrated show.

[u/the_raw_dog1]

If one of those characters isn't the Kevin Bacon superfan from that commercial then I'm not watching

[u/spaceeeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

His best performance was on American Dad. He looked so handsome in that episode.

[u/Cheponsky]

David Lindhagen

[u/KaramQa]

Holo man