Kevin Bacon is one of those celebrities with endless goodwill, and he earns that status by generally not being a problematic D-bag. He’s also one of those actors who is known for being very gracious when approached by fans. Everybody loves Kevin Bacon! Hell, we’re all connected to him by six degrees or less. Kevin is starring in two new movies this summer, both of which came out for the holiday weekend. The first one, MaXXXine, hit theaters on July 3. It’s the third movie in Ti West’s X series. Kevin plays a “sleazy” PI alongside series star Mia Goth. In the second movie, Netflix’s Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Kevin plays a cop who acts as a foil for Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley.
Kevin recently did an interview with Vanity Fair to talk about his new roles, acting as his family business, returning to the horror genre as an established actor, where he feels his career is headed, and more. He also shares a funny story about doing an experiment in which he dressed up in a disguise and walked around in public to see what it’s like to not be recognized. And by “dressed up in a disguise,” I mean that Kevin put on an entirely new face, with prosthetics, fake teeth, and glasses. Turns out, life as an ordinary person is not for him.
Kevin Bacon has daydreamed about walking through life as a regular, nonfamous person. A person who hasn’t been killed onscreen by Meryl Streep (in A River Wild), gone to space with Tom Hanks (Apollo 13), or sat across the courtroom from Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men). A person so unubiquitous that there is no parlor game named for and centered around him. A person who could stroll the Earth for a day without being asked for a selfie by a stranger.
Then Bacon realized he could test out his fantasy by donning a disguise. And not just any old costume-shop purchase. “I’m not complaining, but I have a face that’s pretty recognizable,” Bacon explains on a recent Zoom. “Putting my hat and glasses on is only going to work to a certain extent.”
So the Golden Globe–winning actor and musician went a step further. “I went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise,” Bacon says.
He was outfitted with fake teeth, a slightly different nose, and glasses—a getup that made Bacon look a lot like his character in the new Ti West horror film MaXXXine, a sleazy private detective hired to track down the title character (Mia Goth). Bacon put on his normal-person camouflage and tested it at one of the most densely populated locations in Los Angeles: an outdoor shopping mall called The Grove that is perpetually full of tourists.
To his initial delight, the disguise really worked. “Nobody recognized me,” he says. But then an unfamiliar sensation washed over Bacon: the feeling of being invisible. (Given the actor’s prolific career, it is unsurprising that Bacon has played invisible—in 2000’s Hollow Man—but that was for an audience.)
At the Grove, Bacon recalls, “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.”
When he’s onscreen, though, Bacon loves disappearing completely into a character. That much is clear in MaXXXine, the third film in West’s horror series. Bacon fully basks in his character’s sleaziness, delivering sinister lines in full Louisiana accent. (A sampling: “The past ain’t done with you, Maxine.”) The film bows on Friday, the same week that the actor appears in a movie on the other end of the genre spectrum: the Eddie Murphy action-comedy Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. (Murphy proclaimed Bacon “the perfect villain” for the franchise.)
“I honestly feel very grateful for where I happen to be,” Bacon tells VF in a wide-ranging conversation. “That I can have two totally different movies coming out within a couple of days of each other, and completely different roles. The fact they would both come my way is the thing that I feel the most gratitude for. I’ve fought really long and hard for it.”
I appreciate his honest candor. Kevin could have done the whole noble, fake modesty thing, but nope, he owned that he loves being famous and all of the interaction and perks that come with it. It’s refreshing, particularly in a world where people moan about fame while simultaneously calling the paparazzi to catch them doing a grocery or school run. It would have been really funny if he had come across another famous person and interacted with them in character as a normie. Let’s get some sort of YouTube series going with that as the premise.
As for Kevin’s new movies, I haven’t seen MaXXXine (or any of the other two movies in the series), but I did watch Axel F the other night and thought it was a lot of fun. Taylour Paige and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are also in it, and they’re great additions to the cast. I miss dumb, fun action movies like that. We should bring those types of franchises back. Not the old ones, we’ve had enough Die Hard movies lol, but new ones, with new comedy action stars and plotlines that reflect 2024 stories and values.
Photos credit: Getty Images for Netflix, Melinda Sue Gordon/Netflix