Kevin Bacon names the most important movie of his career
Kevin Bacon is far more than the familiar face in phone commercials; he’s a cinematic mainstay who first danced into stardom with Footloose. His career quickly expanded to critical acclaim with standout performances in A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, and Mystic River. From there, he transitioned into franchise films like X-Men: First Class and took on directing roles with Losing Chase and Loverboy, solidifying his status as a versatile and enduring talent.
If it hadn’t been for him falling afoul of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, he might have had more freedom in the roles he chose. Instead, he ended up in stinkers like R.I.P.D. Even so, Bacon remains a firm fixture of modern pop culture, even if only through a game where people try to connect to him in six steps or fewer.
Regardless of where he’s ended up, there’s no doubt that Bacon has had one hell of a career. According to the man himself, there is one film in his entire catalogue that is most responsible for his incredible life story. “One of the most influential movies I ever did for my career was JFK,” he told Film Freak Central in 2004. “That only took four days for me to shoot. Looking back, it’s probably the most seminal moment in turning things around for me.”
JFK is director Oliver Stone’s ambitious exploration of the assassination of President John F Kennedy. The film stars Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison, a determined lawyer who investigates theories suggesting the event was more than the act of a lone gunman. Kevin Bacon plays a small but impactful role as Willie O’Keefe, a Kennedy witness and male sex worker. O’Keefe provides Garrison with critical information that sets the film’s intricate narrative in motion. For Bacon, this marked a significant turning point in his career as it was his first appearance in a high-profile “serious” film.
“People would ask me after JFK what I believed and I don’t know,” said the actor. “I didn’t care, you know? You presume that people are on the side of their films’ beliefs but that’s just not always the case.”
Bacon might not have cared, but a lot of other people did. JFK reignited interest in the Kennedy assassination and led to a wider circulation of conspiracy theories about what happened that day in Dallas. It’s been referred to as one of the first instances of conspiracy culture entering the mainstream which, considering where we are today, is pretty damn significant.
Elsewhere in the interview, Bacon was asked a big question: when did he feel most comfortable? “It’s a minuscule amount of time in terms of actual time,” he said of his professional life. “But it’s the time that the film is actually spinning in the camera. It’s a delicate sound but it’s a beautiful sound and you can hear it. When I hear it, you know what I mean, I know that it’s my time to do what it is that I’ve tried to learn how to do. Those are great moments. You add all that time up in the course of a year and it’s probably just ten hours–ten hours out of 365 days–in front of the camera, film in the camera. Not enough. It’s not enough.”
Bacon’s 2024 consisted of two films, both sequels. The first was Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, in which he plays the new character, Captain Cade Grant. This was followed by MaXXXine, the third in Ti West’s ‘X’ trilogy. He plays Labat, a PI who attempts to blackmail the title character.
