Who

Bacon's puppy-dog looks made him a teen idol and an inescapable supporting actor. And as everyone who lived through 1997 knows, he's connected to you by six degrees of separation or less.

Backstory

The son of prominent Philadelphia city planner Edmund Bacon, Kevin left home at 17 to study acting in New York. He landed small parts in Guiding Light and Animal House, before impressing prominent critics like Pauline Kael and David Denby with his performance in Barry Levinson's Diner in 1982. But it was his performance as happy-footed rebel Ren McCormack in the 1984 smash Footloose that made him more than a breakfast side dish. Earning rave reviews and comparisons to James Dean—his photo was even slapped on the cover of People—Bacon's stint as a leading man was ultimately a brief one. But he hardly faded away. He went on to a career as a hugely successful supporting actor during the late '80s and 90s with appearances in Joel Schumacher's Flatliners (1990), Oliver Stone's JFK (1991), Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men (1992), Ron Howard's Apollo 13 (1993), and, more recently, Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (2003). Don't think Bacon is a film snob or a prima donna: He's been more than willing to play second fiddle in a slew of embarrassingly lousy films, too, including Wild Things (with Denise Richards) and My Dog Skip (with Frankie Munoz).

Of note

Bacon went from omnipresent character actor to pop-culture icon in the late '90s, when fans noted that his lengthy resume meant that he could be connected to nearly every actor on earth. Thus was born the goofy road-trip game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. According to the definitive website Oracle of Bacon, over 2000 actors have a Bacon Number of 1—meaning that they've worked directly with Bacon—while over 185,000 have a Bacon Number of 2. (He is not, however, the best-connected actor ever—that honor goes to the late Rod Steiger.) Bacon himself was reportedly offended by the game at first, but he soon got in on the joke. He appeared in a Visa commercial which parodied the concept, and even tried to capitalize on his cult following with the charitable website SixDegrees.org.

On the side

Bacon plays in a roots-rock band with his brother Michael. (Imaginatively, the band is called The Bacon Brothers.) Their song "Chop Wood (Carry Water)" was on the soundtrack of Bacon's 2005 film The Woodsman.

Personal

Bacon married fellow actor Kyra Sedgwick in 1988. After dating for 10 months, Bacon proposed on Christmas Eve by putting the ring in the toe of a stocking. They have two children: Travis, who was born in 1989; and Sosie, who was born in 1992. The family lives at 285 Central Park West and also has a weekend home in Sharon, Conn.

Family ties

He is a distant cousin of both Richard Nixon and Mark Hamill, otherwise known as Luke Skywalker.