For Bacon, acting had fascinated him from an early age.
Whenever he returned home after seeing a movie, he would immediately begin pretending to be one of the characters he had just watched. Rather than expensive toys, one of his favorite sources of entertainment was reportedly a box filled with old clothes his mother had saved for him.
Those clothes became costumes.
With them, Bacon could become practically anyone his imagination allowed.
By 1976, he was ready to find out whether that childhood fascination could become something real.
Bacon left Philadelphia and moved to New York City determined to become a professional actor.
The transition wasn’t glamorous.
For his first few months, he stayed on his sister’s couch. Eventually, he found an advertisement in the Village Voice for an inexpensive residence aimed at artists.
It wasn’t exactly the sort of New York apartment associated with successful celebrities.
Bacon couldn’t even afford the space by himself.
He shared it with a roommate, a classical pianist, and the arrangement reportedly continued for several years.
The apartment may have been basic, but Bacon later remembered something surprisingly beautiful about the experience: hearing his roommate playing piano late at night.
At the same time, Bacon was immersing himself in theater and studying his craft.
He attended the Circle in the Square Theatre School, determined to experience what he considered authentic artistic life.
“I wanted life, man, the real thing,” Bacon later recalled.
The young actor had been raised with enormous respect for creativity, and that attitude helped shape the career he was attempting to build.
But enthusiasm didn’t immediately translate into fame.
Like countless aspiring actors arriving in New York, Bacon had to survive while waiting for opportunities.
His roommate inadvertently taught him another useful skill during those lean years: cooking.
Bacon admitted that he knew almost nothing about preparing meals himself. His idea of eating was usually buying a sandwich or grabbing a slice of pizza.
His roommate approached things differently.
“He would cook,” Bacon remembered.
The pianist was careful with money and preferred making his own meals rather than spending what little he had at restaurants.
Bacon watched and learned.
“I got very inspired by that,” he recalled.
At the time, neither of them could have known how dramatically Bacon’s circumstances would eventually change.
His first major film appearance came in 1978’s National Lampoon’s Animal House. More acting jobs followed, but the role that permanently changed his public profile arrived several years later.
In 1984, Bacon starred as Ren McCormack in Footloose.
The movie became a cultural phenomenon, and Bacon’s performance transformed him into a major star.
Suddenly, the aspiring actor who had once shared a tiny New York living space was recognizable around the world.
And Footloose was only the beginning.
Over the following decades, Bacon built an unusually varied career, appearing in films including A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Beauty Shop, X-Men: First Class and many others.
His ability to move between leading-man roles, darker characters, comedy and supporting performances helped give him remarkable longevity in an industry known for constantly searching for the next new face.
His name even became part of popular culture through the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” based on the idea that virtually any Hollywood performer could be connected to him through a surprisingly small number of professional relationships.
But Bacon’s personal life eventually moved in almost the opposite direction from Hollywood spectacle.
He married actress Kyra Sedgwick in 1988, and the couple built a family together while maintaining successful careers.
They have two children, Travis and Sosie.
Away from movie sets and red carpets, Bacon and Sedgwick found something else they loved: country life.
The couple has spent considerable time at their Connecticut farm, where their surroundings couldn’t be further removed from the cramped New York accommodations Bacon once called home.
Instead of traffic and crowded sidewalks, there are gardens and open land.
And plenty of animals.
Bacon and Sedgwick have shared glimpses of life with goats, pigs, alpacas and miniature horses, giving fans an unexpectedly down-to-earth look at the longtime Hollywood couple.
For Bacon, being around the animals provides something fame never could.
“I love animals, they are a joy to be around, and they’re very, very calming for me,” he has said.
The garden has become another important part of their lifestyle.
Rather than simply buying everything at a store, Bacon enjoys being able to walk outside and collect fresh ingredients.
The couple has grown herbs and vegetables such as tomatoes, basil, peppers and zucchini.
It is an amusing contrast to Bacon’s earliest New York years, when he barely knew how to cook anything.
His relationship with the farm animals has even influenced what he is willing to eat.
After becoming attached to certain animals, Bacon has said he stopped eating goats and pigs.
Sedgwick has jokingly suggested that adding even more animals could eventually eliminate additional foods from her husband’s diet.
Their farm life has also produced some unexpectedly popular social-media moments.
Bacon and Sedgwick have posted videos involving their animals, including musical performances for their goats.
The clips became so popular that Sedgwick joked some people seemed more excited about the goats than the couple’s extensive acting careers.
“People were like, ‘We love you singing with the goats,’” she told People.
Her response was appropriately playful.
“Kevin and I are like, ‘Great, have you seen our movies or TV shows?’”
Still, she understood the appeal.
“But it makes people happy,” she added.
Perhaps that is why Bacon’s journey feels so striking.
The surroundings have changed enormously, but certain parts of the story have come full circle.
As a young man, he moved to New York because he wanted an authentic creative life rather than an easy one. He shared inexpensive accommodations, learned from the artists around him and pursued acting without knowing whether the gamble would ever work.
Eventually, it worked beyond anything he could have reasonably imagined.
Yet after decades of Hollywood success, Bacon found himself drawn toward something remarkably simple again.
Animals.
Gardening.
Cooking.
Music.
Family.
And a quiet place away from Hollywood.
The young man paying $150 a month for a shared New York space could hardly have imagined where his career would take him.
But decades later, Kevin Bacon’s story isn’t simply about going from having very little to becoming wealthy and famous.
It is about traveling through the chaos of Hollywood success and eventually discovering that some of life’s greatest luxuries can be surprisingly ordinary — fresh vegetables from the garden, animals outside the door and a peaceful place to call home.