Kevin Norwood Bacon(born July 8, 1958) is an American film and theater actor who has starred in Footloose, Animal House, Stir of Echoes, Wild Things, JFK, and Apollo 13, among.Bacon, the youngest of six children, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia. A former Park Avenue debutante, his mother, Ruth Hilda (née Holmes), taught elementary school and was a liberal activist, while his father, Edmund Bacon, was a well-respected urban planner. In characterizing their parents' approach to raising children, Bacon's older sister Karin explained in Premiere: "We were all given the sense that we should be independent, that we were never to feel needy." Knowing that he wanted to be an actor by age 13, Bacon left home four years later to pursue a theater career in New York, where he was one of the youngest students ever admitted to the Circle in the Square Theater School. "I wanted life, man, the real thing", he later recalled to Nancy Mills of Cosmopolitan. "The message I got was 'The arts are it. Business is the devil's work. Art and creative expression are next to godliness.' Combine that with an immense ego and you wind up with an actor."
Bacon's decision to become an actor did not come without pressures. Describing his father to Mills as a "city-planning superstar", he set very high goals for himself because he "felt nothing less than stardom would be enough." However, his movie debut in the fraternity comedy Animal House in 1978 did not lead to the instant fame for which he had hoped, and Bacon returned to waiting tables and auditioning for small roles in theatre. He refused a subsequent offer of a television series based on Animal House in order to stay on the New York stage. Some of that early work included Getting Out performed at New York's Phoenix Theater, and Flux which he did at Second Stage Theatre during their 1981–1982 season.
His motivation to remain in New York still has resonance for Bacon. "I think my decision had a lot to do with just being afraid," he explained to Chase in Cosmopolitan. "L.A. scared me. I call it the city of fear. I get scared when I land, and I live in fear there, and I think a lot of people do. I mean, I've had a hard time in New York City too, but aesthetically and spiritually, I'm an East Coast person." With the support of his wife, actress Kyra Sedgwick, Bacon believes that he has come to terms with his qualms about Los Angeles, thus strengthening his commitment to acting. "Our lives are still crazy, we still spend a ton of time out [in L.A.], and I've finally admitted that the movie business means a lot to me", he told Chase. "I used to say, it's okay, I can do it, but it isn't that important, and then I realized I was out of my mind; this is what I do for a living."
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. "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", he explained to Cosmopolitan's Chase. "And I was able to keep supporting myself; that always gave me strength."
Bacon and Sedgwick have starred together in Pyrates, Born on the Fourth of July, and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. They have two children, Travis (b. 1989) and Sosie Ruth (b. 1992). Bacon and Sedgwick insist that neither work on separate projects at the same time. In 1994, while shooting The River Wild, Bacon was accompanied at the set by his family. Bacon prioritizes his relationship with his children, something his father never did for him, and does not want to risk his career coming between him and his wife. "No place, no business could break up my wife and me. I would never give the movie business so much credit", he stated in Cosmopolitan. "To me, marriage is about committing yourself to one person. In my opinion, I got the hottest babe there is; I would never do anything to jeopardize that."
