“I want to be famous again”

Kevin Bacon has no desire to live a normal life again.

The legendary actor, who has been in Hollywood for decades, told Vanity Fair that he went undercover with false teeth, a fake nose, and glasses to feel what it was like not to be famous for a day. Turns out, he didn’t enjoy it.

More from IndieWire

“I’m not complaining, but my face is pretty recognizable,” Bacon said. “Putting on my hat and glasses only works to a certain extent. (So) I went to a special effects makeup artist, got some advice and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise.”

Bacon went to The Grove shopping center in Beverly Hills in his disguise. There he was treated like any other shopper.

“Nobody recognized me,” Bacon said. “People were kind of pushing past me and not being nice. Nobody said ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a damn coffee or whatever. I was like, ‘This sucks. I want to be famous again.'”

The “MaXXXine” also recently transformed on screen for his role in the final film of Ti West’s trilogy.

“Ti is the type of person and director who is confident enough to work with others, so we started discussing some ideas. He wanted me to go as far as possible, and I like to take big swings,” he said of his cheesy private investigator performance for the horror film. “He told me very clearly, ‘If we go too far, I will protect you and I will be able to take it back. If we go too far with the look, if we go too far with the dialect or even with the delivery,’ so I trusted him.”

Bacon added that early in his career he had to “resist” being locked into a particular role, especially after his starring role in “Footloose.”

“It’s been very difficult in this industry to become an actor who has the opportunity to make big leaps, because Hollywood wants you to do the same thing you did the last time (a project of yours) made money. When I did ‘Quicksilver,’ the next film after ‘Footloose,’ I thought, ‘I don’t want to do another dance movie. I want a hard-hitting motorcycle movie.’ And suddenly, during filming, they put in a dance scene on motorcycles,” he said. “You really have to fight back and find people who are interested in you making big leaps. But right now, I’m not getting a lot of pushback for the choices I’m making.”

He cited Oliver Stone’s “JFK” as a special role in his past that had put a positive damper on his public image.

“Because of ‘Footloose’ and the movies I was doing, I was perceived very much as a pop star. I don’t even know what you would call it — kind of a boy/leading man,” Bacon said. “So I went in and Oliver basically said the same thing as Ti: ‘Do you want to try it?’ I said ‘sure.’ The next thing I remember is I’m down in Louisiana, hanging out in these pretty tough leather bars. And then I’m up at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, being met by the warden and spending time with the inmates there. It was great. And when the movie came out, my career changed literally overnight. People said, ‘Oh, I didn’t really know you could do that.'”

He continued, “The film industry is unfortunately a very isolating and hierarchical business. There’s an underlying feeling that we have to compete with each other. It’s about being number one at the box office. All that shit, like the size of the trailer or the salaries… it’s all hierarchical bullshit. So I want to be anywhere where I feel like I’m a member of a community that supports each other in creating these things that I think are super important.”

The Best of IndieWire

Subscribe to Indiewire’s newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.