Get the latest gossip

‘You have to get over the me thing’: Kevin Bacon on money, marriage – and learning to live with himself

Kevin Bacon, Hollywood’s great survivor, first set hearts fluttering in the 1984 classic Footloose. Now 65, he’s back on the big screen again. Here, he talks about his band, politics, family, embracing change and, most of all, learning selflessness…

‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told, because of a technical aspect of film-making, to act opposite a piece of tape.’ Photograph: Chris Buck/The ObserverThe night before our conversation, Bacon performed with his brother at Pitchford’s induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Having been a blond, spikily handsome 20-something, there were some lost years around the turn of the century when Bacon (with hanging dark hair and a tendency to wear gleaming shirts) looked a little like the kind of nightclub hustler who ends up running off with someone’s money. Led around, shown the old steel locker he’d used for a day, he ended the visit with a speech from the bleachers that praised the enduring message of Footloose: “To be forgiving of people who are not exactly the same as you… to have compassion.” Back in the 1980s, he tells me, “I don’t think all that stuff really hit me.” Bacon pulls a funny pose: a dancer, frozen mid-leap.

Get the Android app