Happy birthday Kevin Bacon! The actor is celebrating the milestone age of 65 today, Saturday July 8th.
The star has been working as an actor for over five decades, having started his career when he was 19 in the late 1970s. He has since earned critical-acclaim for his roles on Footloose, Mystic River, The Woodsman, and others.
In honor of his birthday, below, take a trip down memory lane as we revisit Kevin's prolific career as an actor and beyond.
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Kevin, born Kevin Norwood Bacon, was born in Philadelphia to mom Ruth Hilda (née Holmes), an elementary school teacher and liberal activist, and father Edmund Bacon, an urban planner with deep ties to the City of Brotherly Love.
The youngest of six children, today Kevin – beyond his work in acting – has a band with his brother Michael, The Bacon Brothers Band, and in April of 2023, they were both honored with a plaque at the Philadelphia Music Alliance's Walk of Fame.
He pursued his passion for acting as early as 17, when he moved out of his home and headed to New York City, and dipped his toes in the water for the first time as part of a production by the Circle in the Square Theatre School.
His film debut came two years later by way of John Landis' cult-favorite comedy National Lampoon's Animal House in 1978, in which he had the role of Chip Diller. Two years later he had a role in another cult-classic: as frisky camp counselor "Jack" in the original Friday the 13th. (Spoiler alert: Jack doesn't survive, and dies in grisly fashion at the hands of a knife-wielding maniac.)
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During that time, he also had roles in Diner (1982), Forty Deuce (1982) and Enormous Changes in the Last Minute (1984), but it was his role on the classic Footloose in 1984 opposite Lori Singer and John Lithgow that made him a household name.
Since then, he has received various Golden Globe, Emmy, Critics Choice, and Screen Actors Guild nods. He won the Best Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television Golden Globe for Taking Chance in 2010, as well as the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries SAG Award for the same role.
Four years after Footloose, Kevin met his wife of 35 years, Kyra Sedgwick, when they starred together in a PBS version of Lanford Wilson's play Lemon Sky.
They tied the knot in September 4, 1988, and have since starred together in several movies, including Pyrates (1991), Murder in the First (1995), The Woodsman (2004), and Loverboy, which Kevin himself directed in 2005.
In 2022, the two attended the TriBeCa film festival to celebrate the premiere of Space Oddity, a romance sci-fi movie Kyra directed and Kevin starred in, and their son Travis Bacon worked on the music for it. "I loved being directed by my wife… She's a fantastic director. She has a very clear vision both with the way things look and feel," he told HELLO! at the time. He added of his kids: "We like to work together, we don't do it just because it's family, we do it because we like the work, the creative process," noting: "They support us and we support them."
Travis is Kevin and Kyra's first son. He was born in 1989, and today is part of black metal band Black Anvil, and has worked as a composer on several of his parents' films.
Their second and youngest daughter, Sosie Bacon, was born in 1992 and has also pursued a career in the entertainment industry. Though her debut role came by way of her parent's film Loverboy when she was 13, she didn't fully get into acting until her early 20s. In 2022, she received critical praise for her lead role in the psychological horror film Smile — following in her father's horror movie roots.
Kevin and Kyra today are based in New York. They live between their apartment in the Upper West Side, and a farm in Connecticut.