Kevin Bacon wore a “prosthetic disguise” to hide fame
Having been famous for a number of decades, it’s been almost a lifetime since Kevin Bacon has been able to travel anywhere incognito, therefore, the actor took it about himself to go undercover as an ordinary person.
The actor made his feature debut in classic comedy Animal House, played a key part in the slasher boom that exploded shortly afterwards by getting offed in the first Friday the 13th, and then became a superstar when toe-tapping extravaganza Footloose took off at the box office.
The latter released 40 years ago, so it’s understandable that anyone to have spent that amount of time living in the public eye would fancy a spot of surreptitious blending in with the masses. Admittedly, there’s a definite air of self-indulgence to his experiment with Bacon exploring what it’s like to not be rich and recognisable for a day.
The man who can be linked to almost everyone in Hollywood through ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ acknowledged that his distinctive visage makes it tricky to disappear into the background, so he enlisted makeup and prosthetic wizards to do their thing.
“I’m not complaining, but I have a face that’s pretty recognisable,” he admitted to Vanity Fair. “Putting my hat and glasses on is only going to work to a certain extent. I went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise.”
As incredible as it may seem, the actor discovered that after his visit to a special effects makeup artist and prosthetics team, “Nobody recognised me.” Proving that some long-tenured celebrities simply aren’t cut out for everyday life, Bacon was less than thrilled at trying to go through a normal day.
“People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, ‘I love you’. I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a fucking coffee or whatever,” he said rather incredulously given that people generally have to queue in order to buy things. “I was like, ‘This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.'”
On one hand, it’s fair enough for Bacon to decide he wants to see how the other half lives when it’s something he’s been unable to do himself for four decades, but on the other hand he seems unreasonably irritated by the most innocuous things that are part and parcel of an everyday existence. Celebrities; maybe they’re not so much like us, after all.
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