Kevin Bacon Rejected ‘Footloose’ Fame Because It Wasn’t a ‘Serious Actor’ Role and He Wanted to Work With Scorsese: ‘The Last Thing I Wanted to Be Was a Pop Star’
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Kevin Bacon’s star-making role in 1984’s “Footloose” put him on a path that clashed with his original aspirations as a performer, the actor recently said on the “Podcrushed” podcast (via Insider). Bacon had no idea he was auditioning for a “dance movie” when he tested for the role of Ren McCormack.
“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.”
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Bacon continued, “They said something about a choreographer and I said, ‘You don’t really need a choreographer. I’ll just get up and dance. It’s not a big deal. Just play the record for me and I’ll jump around.’ So I was definitely not trained by any stretch of the imagination.”
“Footloose” starred Bacon as a Chicago teenager who moves to a small town and leads a teen rebellion against the local minister (John Lithgow), who has outlawed dancing. The film’s dance numbers turned Bacon into a kind of pop star for the 1980s generation, but what he really wanted for his career was serious roles.
“When I became a pop star, the last thing I wanted to be was a pop star,” Bacon said. “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.”
“I was very, very uncomfortable with photo shoots and magazines, and all these things that I dreamed of as a kid,” Bacon added. “Everything that I had dreamed of gave me a tremendous amount of self-doubt and anxiety.”
Bacon would eventually get his shot at working with legendary directors such as Oliver Stone (“JFK”), Rob Reiner (“A Few Good Men”), Ron Howard (“Apollo 13”), Clint Eastwood (“Mystic River”) and more. However, he has yet to be directed by Scorsese. Next up for Bacon are roles in Macon Blair’s “Toxic Avenger” reboot, which just debuted to strong reviews at Fantastic Fest, and Sam Esmail’s thriller “Leave the World Behind,” co-starring Julia Roberts and streaming Dec. 8 on Netflix.
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