Kevin Bacon wore a disguise to spend the day as a normal person and said it ‘sucked’

CNN
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As the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” suggests, actor Kevin Bacon is quite famous, and has been for quite some time.

The “Footloose” and “Friday the 13th” actor — who has been in the movie business for more than 40 years and has two films released this week, “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” and “MaXXXine” — sat down with Vanity Fair for an interview published Friday in which he discussed his longtime status as a highly recognizable star and recently trying to see how the other half is living.

“I went to a special effects makeup artist, had a consultation and asked him to make a prosthetic disguise for me,” Bacon told the outlet.

Once equipped and incognito, he went to The Grove – one of the most visited and populated commercial centers in Los Angeles – and was pleased to discover that “no one recognized him.”

At first he was enthusiastic, but that soon disappeared.

“People were kind of pushing me aside, not being nice. Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to stand in line to, I don’t know, buy a fucking coffee or something,” Bacon noted coyly. “I thought, This sucks. I want to be famous again.”

Bacon, known for his ability to play a wide range of characters, from the extremely sympathetic (see “Tremors” or “Apollo 13”) to the extremely sinister (check out “Sleepers” or “The River Wild”), once again plays the villain in his two new films.

He told Vanity Fair that as an actor he’s never hesitated to take on darker roles because he feels “that’s what an actor is. I never worry about what people think of me. Work is about becoming other people and being part of a story.”

“I don’t need you to go to a movie and love me,” Bacon added. “If you go to a movie like ‘MaXXXine’ or ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,’ and I die and you stand up and cheer, I’m like, ‘Great. That was my performance. That’s what I wanted.'”

“MaXXXine” opens in theaters Friday. “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” is streaming now on Netflix.