Kevin Bacon Hired a Makeup Artist to Disguise Him in Public With Fake Teeth and More, but He Hated It: ‘This Sucks. I Want to Go Back to Being Famous’

Kevin Bacon revealed in a recent interview with Vanity Fair that he commissioned facial prosthetics so he could try going out in public without being noticed as an iconic actor. As the actor said: “I’m not complaining, but I have a face that’s pretty recognizable. Putting my hat and glasses on is only going to work to a certain extent.”

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“I went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise,” Bacon continued, saying he got fake teeth and a slightly different nose made so that he could test out what it would be like not to be Kevin Bacon in public. He went to The Grove in Los Angeles and “nobody recognized me,” which the actor didn’t exactly grow to love.

“People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice,” Bacon said. “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.’”

Bacon has been a recognizable star for four decades since his breakthrough role in the 1984 teen classic “Footloose.” The actor said on the “Podcrushed” podcast last year that the film created a lane for him in Hollywood that did not line up with his original aspirations as a performer. Bacon had no idea he was auditioning for a “dance movie” when he tested for the role of Ren McCormack.

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“When I did the dance movie, I was not a dancer. I wasn’t trained as a dancer,” Bacon said. “If I’m being honest, I didn’t even really understand that it was a dance movie. I thought it was just a movie, and then, where they would indicate that there was dancing, I would just get up.”

“When I became a pop star, the last thing I wanted to be was a pop star,” Bacon continued. “I had already moved into, ‘I want to be Dustin Hoffman or Meryl or John Cazale or De Niro. I want to work with Scorsese. I want to do Chekhov.’ You know what I mean? I was so into what my idea of a serious actor was, and all of a sudden I was given this thing that was completely not a serious actor. So I rejected it, full on. I tried to self-sabotage that piece of myself and my popularity.”

Bacon currently stars in two new movies: “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” is now streaming on Netflix and “Maxxxine” is in theaters via A24.

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