With the impending arrival of X-Men: First Class, there has definitely been an influx of Kevin Bacon-related publicity that we haven’t seen since the days of Footloose. Interpret that however you will, but it can never be a bad thing to hear more about an actor who doesn’t suffer from the disease of specialness. This particular story, however, is both amusing and bittersweet; it seems that, once upon a time, Bacon had enough of the trappings of fame and made arrangements to disappear for a while or, at least, for a few hours at a time behind a disguise. Fortunately, the results were not to his liking:

A couple of years ago, Kevin Bacon needed a few degrees of separation from his fame. He daydreamed of a crowded place where people didn’t tug at his sleeve to gush about Footloose or quote Diner. Finally, he went to a Hollywood makeup specialist and invested in a custom-made disguise that was weirdly simple but completely effective. He paid the $500 and then, with an anxious glee, he took his new rubber face to the Grove shopping center to experience an afternoon without autographs.

“You wouldn’t have recognized me if I was standing next to you,” Bacon said with a faraway expression. “It was really bizarre and I didn’t really like it. I didn’t like it at all. People cut in front of you and when you’re at a check-out counter it’s just … different. People weren’t all that nice to me. I’m just not used to it.”

Sitting in a quiet corner of a Brentwood restaurant, the actor shook his head, perhaps surprised at his own candor and then laughed at himself. “I can’t imagine life without it,” he added, referring to fame, which started to come his way after he left moved to New York at age 18 to pursue theater. On screen he found foothold roles in Animal House in 1978 and on “The Guiding Light” in the early 1980s and, eventually, so many movies that they invented a game about it.

[James] McAvoy said the presence of Bacon on the set added a crackle to the production. “I don’t use this term but it just seems right — Kevin Bacon is just a cool cat. For me, as a moviegoer, if you tell me Kevin Bacon is playing a villain in a summer superhero movie, I’m there man. I’’ be excited, too, to see a film that is bold enough to go with that unexpected choice.”

For an actor with credits such as Mystic River, Apollo 13, The Woodsman, Frost/Nixon and A Few Good Men, stepping into a superhero film wasn’t going to happen unless there was a compelling reason. He cited the presence of producer Bryan Singer and director Matthew Vaughn and the chance to play a dark character who wants the world to burn but rarely raises his voice as his reasons for joining the mutant franchise.

“I haven’t been this guy before,” said Bacon, who studied years of comic books after taking on the role. “He’s a little bit Ted Turner, a little bit Hugh Hefner, a little bit Donald Trump. That’s how I see him. I wasn’t interested in him as scary evil. It was more about control. His power is a metaphor for who he is; he can be different things to different people and he also takes whatever energy you have and throws it back at you.”

[From Hero Complex]

The Bacon nearly left us! For some reason, I’m dying to know what this disguise looked like, but I guess we’ll never know unless Bacon decides to cart it along during his next visit to the Late Show with David Letterman. Bacon’s description of the Sebastian Shaw character only makes me want to see this movie more than I already did, which is really kind of embarrassing since I didn’t enjoy the other X-Men movies at all.

It’s also rather interesting that McAvoy popped into this interview as well; while he had nothing but insightful things to say about Bacon, he’s really doing a lot of the talking on this publicity tour, but I always figured him as the socially-awkward and retiring type instead of, you know, poor, shy Michael Fassbender.

Photos courtesy of WENN and AllMoviePhoto