If Kevin Bacon finds “six degrees” a bit tiresome by now, he brought it largely on himself by amassing a vast and inescapable body of work that permeates our collective film consciousness. Almost immediately upon moving to New York to pursue acting (there was no other plan), he landed a succession of roles in seminal films like Animal House, Friday the 13^th and Diner, all of which guaranteed…nothing. He had to take the night off from his job as a waiter to attend the Animal House premiere.

Then came his shot as a leading man in Footloose. While the dancing and romancing made him a household name, it hardly matched his own vision for his career – he was a “New York actor,” for god’s sake. So he quickly signed on for the lead in the gritty street story Quicksilver, which quickly became Footloose – on bicycles! Follow that with a chaser of Tremors, and you’ll find yourself in a staring match with the phone, which is refusing to ring with more leading man offers.

But if you never envisioned yourself doing anything but acting, you do what you have to do – often against the advice of agents – to keep doing it. For Bacon, that meant taking roles in smaller independents, portraying a string of characters ranging from unappealing to truly reprehensible in films like JFK, Cop Car and the shamefully under-seen The Woodsman. And herein lies his real talent:  investing complex characters with such simple humanity that we’re forced to rethink how we feel about them, and perhaps about our own biases.

Kevin Bacon joins Off Camera to talk about his early days in a family that valued creativity above all else, his approach to developing a character, the surprising pleasures of series TV, and some really awkward guitar moments.  We loved his candid account of how abandoning a bit of snobbery and ego while holding fast to his purpose led to personal fulfillment and the best work of his career.