Kevin Bacon Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

Kind of a hero of mine, you know, when I decided to become an actor, his performances were very influential for me because he was probably the first actor I saw and you could tell he just couldn't play the lead role and I still don't care if anyone liked him. or not, you know he didn't have a problem, it's not like he was trying to be handsome, dynamic, charming, have chemistry or be likable, you could just see he just didn't care, you know the movie. It was al

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like doing a play because we rehearsed it on a sound stage while the set was being built with the recorded set and the props and all that kind of stuff and we rehearsed it in a kind of, you know, theatrical way.

And when we started filming it, Rob was so well prepared and everything was so well broken down in his head that the days really flowed, you know, we didn't have long, crazy days and we would be nice to you. he knew lunches at his office and we spent time together on the weekends and stuff. It was a pleasure to do that. Flatliners Flatliners was a really interesting idea and Joel Schumacher was at the top of his game at the time and Julie Roberts. I was just blowing up, I mean, it was literally like I think during filming or something, that pretty woman went out and became an absolute superstar, but not a damn thing, three 98 degrees 350 of course, it was one of those where You know, even though we weren't kids, you got a lot of us together and the hours were long and you had Oliver Platt and Kieffer and Julie and Billy Bob and me and for such a dark movie there were a lot of laughs.

I mean, to the point where sometimes we couldn't come together and then we'd get in trouble on Friday the 13th, Friday the 13th, you know, listen, it was another

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movie because it was the first one we shot. the movie in Blair's Town, New Jersey, which was on the other side of the George Washington Bridge and since it was in a remote place and there was no transportation, I think they would drop me off on the way back at a bus stop and I would have to get to the bus stop and try to return to Manhattan.

I was doing a play in the town, so I filmed every day. I was terrified of missing the fog with the half hour and the curtain. for the show downtown and I probably did it a couple of times. I had the classic horror movie death because I had sex and then smoked a joint and as soon as that happens to someone in a horror movie, especially if it's you. I know a young person, she is dead. I would say the number one photo that fans put in front of me to sign is a photo of me dead from Friday the 13th.

I have an arrow through my throat and I'm covered in blood and it's always been a little strange to me that what people actually What he wants is for me to sign a dead photo of me, well, first, Meryl Streep for me is the best American actor, um, and the actor that if I could name any actor. that I would aspire to be like her because she is very transformative, of course, it is not surprising that she is the person who will make everyone feel comfortable immediately and she will make you feel that all our jobs are important.

I love John C. Reilly James Street Theron. It's a fantastic group of people to work with and we had the challenges of this incredible physicality of going down this river over and over and over and over again and we're filming in Montana and we were supposed to go to Oregon, but Oregon. They wouldn't allow us to take helicopters to the sections of the river that we wanted to photograph that were designated as wild and scenic, so the director decided that we would stay another month, two months, in this little town called uh libby montana and there was a section of this river which was complete the kootenai river which was completely unnavigable it was just a series of waterfalls you couldn't take a raft up there you would never survive and that's the section we used often it was terrifying I'm not going to make it lie I mean you know we got to the point where once they threw us off the boat and we survived the rapid, it kind of made it a little bit easier because you knew it was possible to survive and you know we were trying, I mean we had training and stuff like that, but they experimented with building a life mask that they would then stick on a double like John and I, but it didn't work because basically what you had was this thing that doesn't look like anything, she can't really use it.

You know, there are a couple of moments where there are probably some doubles, but it was pretty much us the whole time. Apollo 13. Apollo 13 was an incredible experience. the research that goes into trying to figure out how to use astronaut terminology that's not the way my brain works Tom Hanks I think actually I could probably fly the space shuttle right now if I wanted to because I really was a fan from space. and he knew a lot about it, the late great bill paxton was in it and we spent a lot of time with the three of us in a pod, you know, and we had an amazing time.

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surprising thing about doing Apollo 13 was that there is a plane called the KC-135 that NASA uses to train astronauts in zero gravity. There is no way to duplicate gravity on Earth except by flying over the Gulf of Mexico and going up and then submerging and as you go over this submerge centrifugal force and gravitational attraction balance for 26 seconds so you can see what it feels like to float. We were going to try to do it with harnesses like you know and the usual things that you know nowadays would be really easy. but back then, to make it look good, the technology was nowhere near what we are now, Ron Howard came up to us and said that, guys, I was talking to Spielberg and Tibia Bloor, they told me why don't you shoot, why not? you just build the set on the kc-135 and you can shoot there, on the vomit comet they called vomicon because it's incredibly nauseating, that's what we did, we did it, we did it 600 times.

Hey, we have a problem here. You did nothing? I stirred the tanks. Wow, this is Houston. Say again, please, Houston. We have a problem. We would go up to lunch with the camera crew. Minimal camera equipment. The set was built there and we would just film everything. the weight in those weightless scenes and we probably do 40 in the morning to go out and turn around and do 40 on the ground, have lunch, do 40 again and 40 back to about 80 a day and that's how we get there All images of weight loss we did them in a fun way, yeah, I sure took the role, uh, more or less because of the scene where I'm sitting on the bench with the girl because I thought to myself if I can make this moment work.

I can back up the whole movie from there and I thought it was so well written and such a chilling moment, the types of

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they are, the darkness they feel or the things they've done. I'm not afraid, you know, and I don't worry, well, that's going to make me look bad. Making Kevin look bad in my eyes. That's the difference between an actor and a movie star or a celebrity. My dad lets me sit on his lap. Yes, do you like it when he asks you? No, why not? One of the things that I think is important in that part is that very often you will hear it when, when, when people discuss things on the news or talk about uh or them. they write reviews or use this is a line that is often used in um uh in dialogue they will call people monsters that guy is a monster this is a monster that was kind of monstrous monsters aren't scary because they aren't real you know? monsters like the things that come then the guy has a laser gun and he shoots it correctly if they were really monsters then the girl would just call superhero these are people human beings so for me it was really about trying to humanize something that is repulsive and, so such a hot topic for us as viewers as parents, I mean, the important thing for me in making the movie was to try to see if I could make this guy a human being.

Apollo Man seems like an easy gig, invisible man, right, because you don't have to learn any lines, no, you have to learn the lines, you just don't have to be there, I thought to myself, this is going to be the easiest gig in the world because it just Say it in the post and it was pretty clear to me from the beginning that it was actually going to be incredibly difficult and was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. It was green screen, so it was covering green and green giant. green contact lenses green makeup green teeth and then a green suit and it was very difficult to wear it month after month after month and then I had to wear a um once I poured the latex over my head that thing had to be stuck to my mouth and I couldn't eat all day and found it to be a very challenging gig, very talented. authorization please kane 0-0027 confirmed thanks sebastian I can't let you go I'm sorry you have no choice Yes, I do Mystic River for myself, it was definitely one of the most fun experiences I've ever had.

We had the opportunity to work with Clint, who is one of the greats as an

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movie star and also as a movie actor. director and there's no one who really has it, in comparison, he has that kind of stardom as an actor and at the same time he started directing when he was very, very young and he directs movie after movie and there must be up to 35 movies or something like that. That's how it is now and you know, even really successful directors don't get the opportunity to direct 35 movies if they're just directors and he's also an actor.

I mean, it's really extraordinary. We all realized very quickly that there was no rehearsal and sometimes Clinton. he would film the first take and that would be what you would follow or he would film the rehearsal or he would just turn the camera on and not tell anyone the camera was on, we had to come work on the game. jersey in 100 ready to go and we started having our own rehearsals, we were going to someone's room in the hotel we were staying in and it was him too, he shot so fast there was a lot of time in the bar probably too much, but we did it we had a great time, it was really fun, it was a fun show scene where you discover Sean Penn's dead daughter, um and your reaction to that, what was the energy like doing that scene?

Dark, it was a dark day, yes, that. It was a dark day, but again you know Sean came so ready to play that and Clinton came so ready with how he wanted to film it that it's not like when everyone is so well prepared both on the acting side and the emotion side. What you have to go through is that you know that all of this will have an end because you know that this day is not going to last forever. That's when it's really hard when you feel like the director doesn't know that he's like, yeah, you know. that again like it was just I put it all in I left it all out there and now you want me to do it again well I didn't quite understand this angle or you know what I mean it's like that kind of thing it wasn't anything like that , so yeah, it was dark, it was a dark day, but you know everyone got over it, oh Christ, oh, now we know, that was one of those scenes where we had to go down to the ground. on the floor and we had some kind of wrestling match and someone started laughing and, holy shit, we couldn't get over it, we laughed so hard because it was weirdly intimate, you know, because we were all running around together.

Sorry, Emily left her sweater on. my car the other night oh who are you I'm david linhardt david lindhaagen david linhard okay it's a bad time yeah oh jacob do you know how much pain and suffering you caused my friend you're stupid my daughter you stay away from my dog ​​I don't even care I know, come on, I just remember it was one of those things where everyone laughs and then they lean in and then you start seeing the producers looking at their watches and the director starts getting a little irritated and you know. but uh, but yeah, it was fun, I had a good time the next thing, the thing about the next thing is that until that moment I was completely opposed to doing television.

It came about at a time when television was kind of like um, that's where you went when your career died that's where you went so your career died basically you know, I suddenly realized that the idea of ​​being able to, you know, Expanding a character over several seasons was really fun, I mean, when I have a movie script, you know, I'm only going to have a limited number of scenes to tell the story of who this man is. Mike Ryan, back off, no, don't do this, no, come on, you're better than this Mike. You're a good man, put the gun down, take me into custody, you're wrong, Lily, I used to be following, it was a very intense sight, uh, uh, shooting.

I would have dark dreams, you know, and he put me in a dark place, a city on a hill. City on a Hill is a TV show at the time of the show where I play a character called Jackie Rohr, who is another FBI agent who is corrupt and nothing, there's never a scene that Jackie is in that he's not. is doing something. despicable or say something inappropriate or stab someone in the back or take money under the table or do drugs or drink or be a womanizer jackie roy fbi do you mind if I call you dee uh I don't have an accusation raymond that's what I want to talk to you about that you have a cockroach kid on your file, he's an informant of mine, he's working a decent case, he also shot a cop well, he supposedly shot a cop it's a big part it's a big part you should have leftYou Should Have Left is a story based on a German book that my friend Dave and I optioned and it was kind of one of those weird, serendipitous things where we were developing a story about a horror horror movie surrounding a marriage and I happened to read this German book and it was very close to where we already were in our discussions about what this movie was.

It might be better if we had an option in the book, which is what we did, and Dave is a fantastic writer and had directed me years ago in Echoes of Stirrup, which was one of my favorite film experiences and a really excellent film. horror that will come out, I don't know soon, I hope autumn arrives.