Kevin Bacon casually reveals he did the weirdest goddamn thing
Who hasn't called up a special effects artist and had them make a new face for them, just so they can go to the mall?
We’ll be honest here: We have never been Kevin Bacon, and, on deeper reflection, can admit that very few experiences in our lives have even been remotely Kevin Bacon-like. (We’ve never cut Footloose; we’ve never gone Flatlining; we’ve certainly never cameoed as ourselves on a single episode of NBC 2000s-era animated sitcom God, The Devil, And Bob.) (Alas.) Also: We’ve never called up our friends who do high-end movie prosthetics and asked them to make us a new, uglier face so that we can go to the mall to see how regular, non-Kevin Bacon schmucks get by in the world. This is another way we are not like Kevin Bacon, turns out.
Bacon revealed that he one-man Prince And The Pauper’d himself surprisingly casually, in a new interview with Vanity Fair this week. (Even though, had we ever done something this genuinely deranged, we’d at least hold out for The New Yorker.) Noting that—because he’s Kevin Bacon—“Putting my hat and glasses on is only going to work to a certain extent,” Bacon said that some time ago he “Went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise.” Then he went to the mall!
And, again: This isn’t something Kevin Bacon did for a film role. He wasn’t getting ready to Tyler Perry himself, or even do some kind of Eddie Murphy/Gary Oldman/Tyra Banks kind of thing. He just woke up one morning, thought, “Wonder what it’d be like if I didn’t have Kevin Bacon’s face for a day?” and made it happen.
Bacon says the disguise, which he tried out at The Grove in Los Angeles, completely worked, rendering him invisible for basically the first time since, like, Diner. But then, the appeal of anonymity began to pall. “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. I was like, This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.” And do you hear how self-effacing and funny Kevin Bacon is, even when describing one of the weirdest, most Mrs. Doubtfire-but-actually-happened decisions we’ve ever heard another human being make? That’s star power, folks.
Anyway, be vigilant: Kevin Bacon could apparently be anywhere.