Kevin Bacon opens up about always putting his family matters first.
THE ACTOR REVEALS HOW HE ALLOWED HIS KIDS TO CUT FOOTLOOSE — AND THEY FOLLOWED HIM INTO SHOWBIZ!
“You have
to have something in your life more important than work.”
— Kevin
It’s been nearly 40 years since his bigscreen debut in National Lampoon’s Animal House, yet out of all the roles Kevin Bacon has played, one remains his favorite: Dad. “The proudest accomplishment of my life is my children,” the 58-year-old star told Closer at the premiere of his Amazon series I Love Dick. “Being a parent [means] bringing them up and trying to teach them and have them learn by example to be good, decent, compassionate, hardworking people.”
Of course, Kevin has been helped by wife of 28 years Kyra Sedgwick, 51 — the mother of son Travis, 27, and daughter Sosie, 25. The couple shares a hands-off parenting philosophy. “We didn’t have the kind of relationship with our kids where we would say, ‘You’ve got to do this,’ ” Kevin says. “Our kids are very independent.” In fact, the actor says, “My son refused to let me teach him how to ride a bike or how to swim. Those are dangerous things! But both my children were a lot like me when I was a kid — they didn’t really come to us for advice or help.”
THE BIG PICTURE
Even with the free rein Kevin and Kyra gave their kids to do whatever they wanted, both ended up following in their parents’ footsteps: Travis is a musician like his dad, who performs with his sibling Michael in the rock group the Bacon Brothers, and Sosie has become an actress. “We can talk about acting and the industry, and it’s really fun,” Kevin says of his bond with his daughter. “It’s cool because we have this new line of communication.”
Kevin cast Sosie opposite her mom in Loverboy, a film he directed in 2005, and she guested on several episodes of Kyra’s TV drama The Closer. But only in the past few years has she seriously pursued acting, and now she’s co-starring with Kevin in Kyra’s directorial debut, Story of a Girl, a TV movie about social-media bullying among teens that premieres July 23 on Lifetime. Plus, “Travis wrote the music for it,” Kevin beams. “So it was complete, rampant nepotism!”
— Bruce Fretts, with reporting by Amanda Champagne-Meadows and Jaclyn Roth