Kevin Bacon Quotes
Actor
I have fond memories of Chris Penn, who's sadly not with us. He always made me laugh - it was great to be with him.
'Animal House' was my first movie, so I didn't have anything to compare it to. I was a sight gag more than anything else. So I can't say it was one of those things where your life changes. When the movie came out, I had to ask for the night off at the bar.
We are being choked to death by the amount of plastic that we throw away. It's killing our oceans. It's entering into our bodies in the fish we eat.
I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition. I think in the course of your life you figure out ways to deal with that.
Things could be worse. You remember that, and you go on with your life.
Part of being a man is learning to take responsibility for your successes and for your failures. You can't go blaming others or being jealous. Seeing somebody else's success as your failure is a cancerous way to live.
A moustache is actually the one thing I really can grow. One of the bad parts about my facial hair situation is that I can't grow sideburns. I'm happy to still have my own hair on my head, but I can't grow any sideburns. If you ever see me with sideburns, they're not real.
Whether it's my age or my misspent youth, sometimes I forget whether I've worked with somebody or not.
A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly.
There are two types of actors: those who say they don't want to be famous, and those who are liars.
Critics can be your most important friend. I don't read criticism of my stuff only because when it's bad, it's rough-and when it's good, it's not good enough.
When I go home, I try to raise my children with honesty and integrity and teach them to take care of the world and of each other.
My brother is the lifelong musician; he made the choice to do that when we were very, very young kids. I remember him playing in bands and listening to the music he was writing in the house - he's nine years older than me.
For my wife and I, for so many years, a lot of our identity was based on being Hollywood haters. We were like, 'We're east-coast. We're New Yorkers. This is just a place that we have to come to, but not by choice.'
The way I analyze a script, I don't look at how many days I have off. I see how far they're going to push me. That's just the way I am.
I just let the work speak for itself. An actor is not afraid to take risks; to put on different hats; to be a good guy, a bad guy, a victim, an abuser. There are all kinds of people in the world, and playing them is what acting is all about.
I like to hike and cook. I enjoy furniture and design - not making it, just looking at it. I'm always kind of trying to spread my interests around and try new things.
I have a natural swagger.
There's this American dream to put enough away that you can golf and build a birdhouse or just be in a Barcalounger watching football all day. I'll never be that guy. And I'm not really sure the people who have that are all that happy. Our desires as a man are to work, plow ahead, and overcome conflict.
Any idiot can get laid when they're famous. That's easy. It's getting laid when you're not famous that takes some talent.
My family survived losing money to Bernie Madoff incredibly well compared to others.
I like directing. It takes a lot out of you, but I'd like to do it again - I just have to find a story I want to tell.
If you take me out of it, I find 'six degrees' to be a beautiful concept that we should try to live by. It's about compassion and responsibility for everyone on the planet.
As I was coming up on the stage, there was one source that could make or break you, the New York Times. Inevitably there would be one actor singled out for a better review, or worse, than somebody else. The effect of that was cancerous, divisive.
I always wanted, and still aspire, to be something more than just one thing, just one performance.
I'd love to be a pop idol. Of course, my groupies are now between 40 and 50.
There is this idea that your social media platform is the secret to success, but no one has quite proven that to be true, if you ask me.
There are very few things that are purely conceptual without any hard content.
I wasn't going off to New York to be more famous than my father, but in retrospect, that certainly was driving me. He was famous in Philadelphia, but it was also really important to him to be famous. And to a certain extent, I got some of that, even though there were parts of it that horrified me.
'The River Wild' was great, with Meryl Streep. That guy was really a bad dude who was ultimately sort of fundamentally impotent in a weird way. That was kind of interesting.
The business that people do in LA on the social level is amazing. You go to a restaurant, bump into this guy or that guy. The next day you get a call, and they want you in their movie.
I would say invisibility would be sort of a fun power to have just to see what it was like to move through the world and not be looked at.
Gary Oldman is impossible to steal a movie from. He's such a great actor, he's off the hook. I love him.
There is a lesson there about greed and it is a lesson I am willing to learn as well. Has it made me a distrustful person? I don't think so. But we probably look a bit more carefully at our financial situation now.
You can sit around and complain that Hollywood doesn't make any good movies. But you can generate your own material. So I read books. I come up with ideas. I was the producer on 'The Woodsman' to help get that off the ground. Sometimes that extends itself to directing.
I feel like my responsibility as an actor is to make characters as compelling and believable as possible.
L.A. kind of scares me.
My father was into fame and leaving his mark. He was a city planner, sort of a genius in that world, the Robert Moses of Philadelphia. He was on the cover of 'Time' once, and I remember going to his office and seeing, like, two hundred copies, which he would hand out to people.
I don't have any plans of slowing down. I love being an actor.
Being with Kyra is so natural for me; it's the easiest aspect of my life. I know that I don't need a beach or room service to be happy.
I'm always happier and a better actor when I can really lose myself in a character and become somebody else.
When it comes to music, it's my clothes, it's my guitar, it's my voice, it's my song.
I'm obsessed with zombies. I like watching zombie movies and I read zombie books.
I think we all have a lot of darkness in our bellies. As an actor, the challenge of tapping into that, reaching down into that sadness or anger, is very therapeutic.
I don't have to do the lead. If I dig a part, I'll do it.
'Kung Fury!' I mean, Jesus, that thing is amazing.
Clint Eastwood has always been a hero.
I'll be honest with you. My kids don't watch my movies and never have. I can maybe name a film one hand that they've seen, actually, all the way through.
The most challenging work and the best work I've ever done was in a thing I did for PBS called 'Lemon Sky', a play by Lanford Wilson. I think it's the rawest, most complex work that I've had to do, and the thing I'm most proud of.
From an acting standpoint, when I was a kid, I thought I knew everything there was to know. As the years go by, this craft becomes more intensive as I get older. You realize how much more there is to know and to learn, and how much better you can get, if you really work at it.
I do struggle with how much and in which way, as an artist or celebrity, that you voice your political views.
I do better on the first three takes; I won't be better at 20 takes.
I'd always tried not to worry about the size of the role or the size of the film.
Before Footloose, the things I'd done weren't cute. In Diner I was an alcoholic.
I'd really like to get the girl, shoot the gun, drive the car, have fun. I even have these kind of action dreams, where I'm the action guy.
I think of myself more as a workhorse actor. It will be hot and cold and up and down, but no one will kick me out of the business.
I didn't get into this so I could talk about my work, my movies. You become an actor to act.
It does get old to have to always be a monkey in a zoo. I don't know what it's like any more to be anonymous.
I don't read my own reviews and I haven't for probably 15 years. I read other people's reviews, though.
I don't want to stop acting, but acting in some ways is a young man's game.
There's the most resistance to an actor singing. It's like I'm being disloyal to my industry.
Some people have therapy, some people are alcoholics or they're in AA. Some people jump out of planes on weekends or find ways to release this kind of thing. And for me, it's acting. I find acting very therapeutic for whatever it is.
I think one of the most pervasive evils in this world is greed and acquiring money for money's sake. Once you have six houses and a plane, it's just about a number. It's never been anything I understood.
There are people who tell you to shut up because you're just a celebrity, but pundits, talking heads, they're every bit the celebrity and a lot of them aren't any more qualified than the average man on the street.
I don't watch the movies I make, so I haven't seen 'Footloose' since it came out. You see this young, hungry actor, it's pretty fun. I was the only one they screen tested. It was an attempt by the director and producer to talk the head of the studio into hiring me because they didn't want me.
I've made three studio albums and one live one with my brother. It's melodic singer-songwriter acoustic-rock music.
Ninety-five percent of celebrity is good.
If you're an actor, even a successful one, you're still waiting for the phone to ring.
There are some actor secrets you keep sometimes, and you want to keep.
If I'm in a situation where someone doesn't recognize me and treats me like everyone else, I'm not used to it.
With a lot of actors, you've got to chip through the surface to see who the real person is.
Here's the thing - I mean, I don't act for statues. I really don't. The great thing about winning an award is that it creates opportunities.
I'm a vagabond. I have a suitcase that is ready to go at a moment's notice. The thought of being in one place for a long time, or playing one character for a long time, is terrifying for me.
I'm very comfortable being married to an extremely strong, opinionated, and driven woman. But I also sit at the head of the table. I have both of those sides to me.
My kids don't watch my movies. What I want to do is go home and hug my kids, talk to them and engage with them.
There are two things that create opportunities. One is being involved with something that makes money, and the other is winning awards. And the reason that winning the awards creates the opportunities is because it gives the people who are selling the picture the opportunity to make more money.
When it happened to us and it was all gone overnight, we said, 'We are in this together, we are healthy, our children are healthy and we can work'.
If you look at films about becoming a man, coming-of-age movies are made with 12-, 16-, 40-, 50-year-olds... For a guy to feel like he's a 100 percent grown-up is almost like giving up. Like admitting that you're on your way into the grave.
I've been in silly movies and romantic movies and historic movies.
I try to show compassion to people I come into contact with and try to put good out, as much good as I can. But that's my life; that's not my work. With my work, my job is to walk in another man's shoes.
Kevin's mind goes to extremely interesting places. Every time we get a script, I go, 'Oh my God, I really didn't see that coming'.
I always have a suitcase ready to go. My wife and I are both very much like this. We're both vagabonds, and we have been since the time we were married.
Fame is very much a double-edged sword.
I want to see the numbers that prove that show-business marriages are any less successful than other marriages. It's just very public when they fail.
Great writing makes great television.
I've played a lot of bad guys, and I'm pretty good at leaving my work at the office. And I look at acting as having a certain sort of therapeutic nature to it.
My dad was an architect, and he wasn't a rich guy, but in our little world in Philadelphia, he was famous. He loved to see his picture in the paper. I wanted to be more famous than him.
Show me an actor who doesn't want to be famous, and I'll show you a liar. Later, you realise that there's more to it than just the acquisition of fame, and money and girls. But that is what drives them and was what drove me, initially.
I think of being an actor as kind of a young man's gig. It's emasculating, in a way, people messing with you and putting make-up on you and telling you when to wake up and when to go to sleep, holding your hand to cross the street. I can do it up to a certain point, and then I start to feel like a puppet.
I started working in the mid-to-late Seventies, when television was not what it is now.
'X-Men: First Class' was fun.
One of the top comments I get from people is, 'Oh my God, you're like a regular person!' That's kind of a bizarre thing to live with. I know a lot of famous people, and their lives may not be regular, but they are regular people.
I like playing complex, interesting characters. Sometimes I don't think there's much of a strong line between right and wrong for a character. Every character is somewhere on a moral spectrum.
I used to live on Riverside Park in New York, on the Upper West Side.
I like to play characters, man. I almost don't even think of them as good guys or bad guys. I know that's a hard thing to realize, but I really just think of them as characters.
The greats are 'The Shining', 'Rosemary's Baby', 'Don't Look Now', 'The Exorcist' - those movies were not really slashers: they were about psychological terror and had very deep emotional backdrops. If we do our best, '6 Miranda Drive' can be that kind of a movie.
I always have to make it as clear as I possibly can that fame is 99.9 percent good.
'Gogglebox' is a show where you watch people watch television.
I was in the first 'Friday The 13th,' and that was a microbudget horror film.
I'm not someone who comes onstage and says, 'I'm rewriting this now.' I don't think it's fair to the writers or the director, or the other actors.