‘Rear Window’ Star Kevin Bacon Peers Into His 40-Year Career

All eyes are usually on Kevin Bacon.

“The second I step out of my house, it happens,” says the prolific actor at the offices of Hartford Stage, where he is rehearsing for his starring role in “Rear Window.”

“I never go anywhere where people aren’t looking at me and passing some kind of a judgment, whether it’s positive or negative.”

Such is the life of a familiar face whose nearly 40-year acting career, primarily in the movies, includes memorable performances in “Footloose, “Apollo 13,” “Mystic River,” “JFK,” “The River Wild,” “A Few Good Men” and “X-Men: First Class.”

But in “Rear Window,” he’s the one doing the peering.

In person, Bacon, 57, reminds you of that hip, slightly dangerous, slightly arty dude you knew in high school — if he gave up the cigs, kept up with Pilates and yoga, and watched his carbs. (And yes, he’s still with the same cool chick.)

In the play — set in the ’40s, and based on the same by Cornell Woolrich short story that was the basis of the now-classic 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film starring James Stewart — Bacon plays a writer confined to his Manhattan apartment because of a broken leg. He has little to do but look out at his back window, where he observes the multi-leveled apartment life of his anonymous neighbors on a sweltering summer night before air conditioning was common.

“He’s my kind of leading man because he’s a mess,” says Bacon. “He’s definitely not Jimmy Stewart.”

But Bacon also relates to some of the particulars of Woolrich’s biography, some of which is incorporated in the stage version by Keith Reddin, and directed by Darko Tresnjak in his first new work since he won the Tony Award in 2014.

And they are?

“That he felt like a hack and an also-ran,” says Bacon. “I think all actors suffer that emperor’s new clothes feeling, that we’re about to be discovered that we’re a lightweight.”

Bacon’s film career got off to flying start with his starring role as the dance-loving heartthrob in 1984’s “Footloose” when he was 26, but then began to stall in the late ’80s. In the ’90s he recast himself as a versatile character actor and has been working steadily in mainstream and indie projects ever since. In “Rear Window,” he returns to the stage in a leading-man role and — just in terms of box office ticket sales — he’s created a sensation, with the entire run selling out in a matter of days.

Film producers Jay Russell and Charlie Lyons had the initial idea of the stage adaptation and sought out their friend Bacon, with whom they had worked on several film projects. They brought him in first for a reading and later for this production when Bacon’s schedule opened up.

When Bacon heard the idea of a stage adaptation of a movie, he thought it was risky, “but it was explained to me it was going to be so different from the movie. They were delving into the world of Woolrich, both in terms of his original short story and his own personal, complicated and fascinating life. He was a closeted homosexual and a raging alcoholic who had a short marriage. He also lived with his mother for many years, then became a recluse and ended up basically, prophetically, with an amputated foot sitting in his tiny apartment looking out.”

‘Footloose’ And Free

Though Bacon started out in the theater, his acting career primarily has been in motion pictures, with some time out for TV and a rare stage appearance. (He was last on Broadway in 2002 in the solo show, “An Almost Holy Picture.”)

Bacon says the rock band The Bacon Brothers, in which he has played with his older brother, Michael, between acting assignments since 1995, satisfied his need to perform in front of a live audience.

“If I didn’t have the band I would have done more theater,” he says. “There’s a certain element of danger when anything can happen [while performing live] that I feel is important to my creative life.”

He has been approached regularly to star in plays and even musicals. Given “Footloose,” the man can obviously dance — still.

He recreated his iconic dance moves last year on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” while he was filming his since-ended TV series “The Following.”

“I rented the movie on Netflix to refresh my memory of some of the moves,” he says. “I hadn’t seen it since I did it.”

But a more telling look-back came a few years earlier, when he came across his “Footloose” screen test for that film in a special DVD anniversary edition.

“That was truly an out-of-body experience,” he says. “I remember being in my New York apartment and I put [the film] on ‘pause’ and went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. It was a weird thing because the kid I saw in that audition was not the person I saw in the mirror. I could see this hunger in his [younger self’s] eyes. I didn’t have the part yet and yet there was this combination of drive and cockiness, the cockiness based on nothing, really. But I especially remember that hunger.”

And would he say anything to that younger self?

“I wouldn’t tell him anything,” he laughs. “‘You got the [expletive] part!’ I’d just get out of his way, frankly.”

Family Drive

Bacon had that drive at an early age. The youngest of six children, Bacon was the son of Ruth Bacon, an early childhood educator and liberal activist, and Edmund Norwood Bacon, an architect, urban planner and executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. When Bacon was 6 years old, his dad was on the cover of Time magazine.

“Fame was very important to my dad,” he says. “Even though he was a brilliant man, he was also very aware of his own [fame] and he felt strongly that he wanted to make an impact on the world.”

That rubbed off on his son.

“This sounds a little hard core, but I wanted to kick his [expletive],” he says. “So yeah, I had a very complicated but important relationship with fame.”

But Bacon just didn’t know in what field he wanted to be famous.

When he was 13 he was writing songs, so it was “Rock star? Actor? I could have gone either way. But then I got into an acting class and my entire focus shifted and I started thinking about acting as a craft and acting as a place to free yourself physically and emotionally and to experience other characters and other lives.”

His acting influences were Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep (whom he later worked with in the film “The River Wild”), Jon Voight, Al Pacino and Raul Julia, actors who could transform themselves to many roles.

When he was 17, he went to New York to study at the Circle in the Square Theater School, where “there was no talk about how to do a movie or a TV show. In fact, it was looked down upon.”

Starting Over

But then Bacon was offered a small role as frat pledge and ROTC guy Chip Diller in 1978’s “Animal House” when he was 19. “I went back [to the New York acting school] and felt, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m a professional actor.’ Then I became a professional waiter for the next four years.”

A stint on the soap “The Guiding Light” paid the bills, as did a lot of theater work, on Broadway, off-Broadway and at regional theaters, including a role at Long Wharf Theatre in “Mary Barnes” with Eileen Atkins, and another at Springfield’s StageWest.

There also was a bit part in the original “Friday the 13th” film. (“I had the classic horror movie death: You have sex with the girl, you smoke a joint and then you’re dead.”)

It wasn’t until a role in the ensemble film “Diner” in 1982 brought the actor another break-out shot at the movies.

Then came “Footloose.”

“It didn’t read it as a dance film to tell you the truth,” he says. “I told [director-choreographer] Herb Ross, ‘I’ll just dance around a little, you don’t need to hire a choreographer’ and he said, ‘You have no idea.'”

But the launch into stardom Bacon was a soul-searching dilemma for the actor.

“The problem was, ‘Footloose’ was kind of the opposite of what the kind of actor I wanted to be. I wanted to be in ‘Ordinary People,’ ‘The Great Santini.’ I didn’t want to be in [expletive] ‘Footloose.’ So I think I was kind of resistant to [the attention].

“I’m not somebody who likes to look back, because I think you have to go through a process, and in the infinite wisdom of the universe if you move one little piece the whole thing could come crumbling down and not work. But if I was to change anything I would have tried to just embrace that a little bit more. ‘Yeah, here I am, give me a magazine cover!’ What I didn’t understand was the machinations of the business as an industry and the fact that the more you’re associated with popular projects — well, you can suck but if you’re in a [hit] they’re going to be giving you better and better parts and more good directors will want to work with you. But I had it in my head that that’s not where I wanted to be.”

But Bacon survived, as many of his peers came to more grave endings.

“I’m grateful [for not dying], for being road kill. I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. All I’ll say is — it’s my current quote — is that there is no secret to longevity. Longevity is the secret. If you can just hang in there and just try to keep your [expletive] together, keep trying to do what you do, sooner or later life is going to line up with the right part.”

But how did he do it?

“I wish I had an answer for that. My parents were great and smart, loving people, but at the same time people have had smart great loving parents and they’re not movie stars or no longer here or married for as long as we’ve been married.”

Bacon has been married 27 years to actor Kyra Sedgwick (TV’s “The Closer”). They have two children in their 20s, Travis and Sosie. One is a musician and the other is starting her acting career.

Six Degrees And Madoff

But there were some associations over the years that Bacon could have done without.

In the mid-’90s, Bacon’s name became synonymous with global interconnectedness because of a movie trivia game called “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” that challenged people to find the shortest distance path between a famous actor and Bacon.

“I didn’t like it at first because I thought it was a joke at my expense, and it was a time when I felt like an also-ran. It was like, ‘Can you believe the great Laurence Olivier can be connected to this guy?’ It took me a long time to get over that. What I do like about it now, if you take me out of it, is that it’s a powerful idea.”

Bacon has further taken the negative and made a positive out of it by creating the SixDegrees.org charity organization that embraces the concept of connectivity, “and that we take care of each other and take care of our planet.”

Another headline involved an even tougher association for Bacon: Losing a fortune in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. In 2009, Madoff, 73, began serving a 150-year prison sentence for running the $50 billion dollar scam. Bacon and Sedgwick were among the many victims who were burned — “[who were] Bernied,” he says.”

“But do you know what? My wife and I looked at each other and we went, ‘We have each other, we’re healthy and the kids are good.’ As it turned out, we were able to put things back together really well. And again, you got to have those experiences to live and learn.”

Tattoo Time

Bacon is now featured in the indie film “Cop Car” and the studio pic “Black Mass.” Yet to be released is “6 Miranda Drive.”

Beyond “Rear Window” Bacon says he’d love to work with his wife on stage, something they’ve never done.

And as far as doing a project involving the entire family, there was one they did — and that involved tattoos all around.

“I never wanted a tattoo because it’s a dumb thing for an actor to get because you’re constantly in a situation where you have to cover it. So my daughter was about to graduate from high school and we were sitting around and I said, ‘What would you guys think if we all got a family tattoo?’ — as a joke. I thought they’d say, ‘Are you out of your mind? No way.’ And to my shock everyone said yes. So I took out a cocktail napkin and right there I designed it over dinner. We all went out to Brooklyn and we did it.”

Can I see it?

Bacon rolls up his right sleeve and on his forearm is a design featuring two K’s facing each other and a T and an S.

REAR WINDOW begins previews Friday, Oct. 23, opens Oct. 30 and runs through Nov. 15 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St. The run is sold out. Information: hartfordstage.org and 860-527-5151.