With 40 years’ worth of credits across film, television, and theater, few actors working today are as recognizable as Kevin Bacon. After the ongoing coronavirus pandemic shut down production on Season 2 of his Showtime Boston crime drama, “City on a Hill,” he spread awareness on social distancing practices with his #IStayHomeFor social media campaign, which brought him to an advice-stuffed Instagram Live interview with Backstage. Catch him now in Universal Pictures’ psychological horror film “You Should Have Left.”
COVID-19 Resources for Actors, Creators + Performing Artists What has playing Jackie on “City on a Hill” added to your acting skills?
Let me put it this way: When I first became an actor, I judged how good a part was by the amount of lines that I had. I used to say, “Well, the more I have to say, the better the part is!” And then I went through this period where I felt like it was really about doing more with less, and I was really interested in trying to internalize things. I did a number of roles that were men of very few words, and that had its own challenges, that was great. And then, right on the heels of that, I got this script for “City on a Hill,” and I’m looking at it; it’s long speech after long speech after long speech—this guy just does not shut up. To jump back into that kind of a character and to really embrace the verbosity of this guy was really exciting and almost Shakespearean. It’s like Shakespeare with a lot of fucks, and I really enjoy doing that.
How did you first get your Equity card?
It was shameless nepotism, because even though I don’t come from a theatrical family, I had a cousin on my mother’s side who was a director, and she was doing a children’s theater tour in West Springfield, Massachusetts. I think I played a coyote.
READ: How to Become a Musical Theater Actor
Do you have an audition horror story you could share with us?
Wow, yeah, many—but let’s see. I never went up for musicals; I wasn’t trained as a triple threat, never did the high school musicals, I didn’t really think of myself as a singer and definitely not a dancer, but I did like to go out to discos. I was right there at Studio 54 during its heyday—not as a celebrity, as a waiter. I wasn’t waiting tables at 54, but I was working as a waiter, and I would get into 54 somehow and dance the night away. I was really into going out and dancing. On the tail end of disco, there was a show on Broadway that was going to be mounted called “Got Tu Go Disco,” and my agents went, “I know you’re not going up for musicals, but this is so much like you: It’s about this young guy [who] wants to go out clubbing, basically, so I think you should go in on it.” And I didn’t understand that in order to audition for a musical, you had to get a pianist or had to learn the song; I just got a record and sang along with it. They wanted me to sing a disco song. There was a disco song at the time called “I Love the Nightlife” by an artist named Alicia Bridges, and I just got the record and sang along with it, and it sounded OK to me because I was singing an octave down from Alicia Bridges, but apparently the sheet music was in a way higher key. I took it in, and the piano player started to play, and it was way, way out of my range. I just kind of fell apart and my knees buckled and I said, “I’m sorry, I made a terrible mistake,” and I walked out.
What’s one screen performance every actor should see and why?
I’m obviously not an expert on everything, but I found for myself that it’s more valuable to me to watch documentaries than it is to watch other actors’ performances. I love to watch other actors’ performances, because they are great and I’m watching them as a consumer of film and of entertainment, but I don’t watch them because I’m going to learn how to act. I find that documentaries are actually way more helpful, because you’re looking at real people and you’re looking at real people in real situations. Not to be too trendy, but “Tiger King,” to me, was great. My wife said, “Why do you watch this?” and I said, “Well, because these are all guys that I would be asked to play.” To think about that is helpful to me. That being said, I’m gonna give you two. When I was about 15, in Philly, there was a local theater that had a double bill; it was, like, a dollar to get in and it was two movies: “The Graduate” and “Midnight Cowboy,” both with Dustin Hoffman. I looked at that and I went, “Holy shit, that’s the same guy.” Like, I thought that was just some homeless guy that they found, but that’s actually an actor, and I thought that was just some preppy kid that they found, but that’s the same guy. To me, that was very, very formative, because I went from thinking that being an actor was like being on “The Monkees” or something like that to [realizing] it’s actually about inhabiting different people’s essence.
What’s one piece of advice you would give your younger self?
It would be to take some advice, because I was incredibly cocky and I didn’t really think that anybody had any kind of good advice to offer me. I would pretend that I wanted it from an agent, from an acting teacher, from an older actor—but the truth is I was a know-it-all. The older I’ve gotten, the more I know there is more to learn. When people say to me, “I’m thinking about being an actor, what should I do?” what I usually say is, “Drop the hell out, because if you’re thinking about it, then you’re probably not the right person to do it.” It’s got to be your whole focus; there’s too much competition. You can’t be in a situation where somebody said you were kind of cute in the school play or you look good in a photograph or whatever and you think you’re gonna try it for a while. So what I tell people when they want to explore a career in acting, I say, “Don’t do it.” And the person who can then say, “You know what? Kevin Bacon told me don’t do it and I told him to go to hell,” that’s the person who should try to explore this career because it’s a lifetime of rejection, it’s a lifetime of no. You don’t get the part, you don’t get the good review, you don’t get the box-office success—all these things that you don’t get far outweigh the little things that you sometimes get, and I know it’s maybe easy to say from where I’m sitting, but I have felt that. You have to have very, very thick skin, and you have to be ready for that, because there’s gonna be some heartbreak along the way.
This story originally appeared in the July 2 issue of Backstage Magazine. Subscribe here.
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