Kevin Bacon Talks Cop Car, Black Mass and Choosing Roles

With a movie in theaters, one coming out next month and no sign of stopping, Kevin Bacon is proving to be a force to be reckoned with. He’s managed to choose wildly diverse roles and stay relevant in both the television and film worlds. The actor, 57, took time out to chat with Parade about his various projects, including his roles as a producer and a musician.

You have quite a presence in Cop Car as both the star and a producer. What drew you to that project that made you want to be more involved with it?

It’s a script that I read and I was really able to picture the movie from one reading. It just played for me in my mind and I could see the character, I could hear the voice and one of the things I really loved about it was that it exists on two levels in a way. One is that it’s a thriller, scary and intense, with a certain amount of violence. But then it’s also got a lot of heart and it’s really a story about a loss of innocence of these two little boys and their lives being forever changed by this extraordinary event in this one day.

Tell me about the film.

It’s a very cool indie thriller about two boys who steal a cop car. They’re ten-year-old boys walking across a plain and they see this abandoned cop car, figure out how to drive it and drive away with it. It ends up being my car, I’m the sheriff of the town. To say they took the wrong guy’s cop car would be an understatement.

Black Mass opens next month; what’s your role in that movie?

It’s based on a true story about Whitey Bulger who was this Boston gangster. I play a combination of a few guys who were running the FBI field office at the time when Whitey was spreading mayhem throughout Boston. One of the agents underneath me makes a deal with Bulger to look the other way as long as Whitey will give him information on the Italian mafia. So I’m that guy’s boss.

You’ve been working consistently for decades with no sign of stopping and no hesitation. What has kept you going?

I’m an actor. It’s what I do. It’s what I chose to do with my life when I was a little boy and that’s what I’m still doing. I like to work. I came up with a work ethic and that’s just what I do.

Have there been any roles that you’ve taken that you’ve felt have been most like you or farthest away from yourself as a person?

I don’t know if I would go through and be able to categorize them by how big a stretch they are. Even if the character seems on the outside like it’s far from the field of what people think about me or what they think they know about me, it may not be the most difficult journey because it may be that I immediately get a sense of who this is. To me, the struggle is to try to make a less-well-written or less-well-rounded character and find who they are. If you really get it and it’s all on the page then it’s really just gonna pop out at you. My theory is that you have to lose yourself and use yourself so there’s nobody that I’ve played where I’m like, “I’ll just be Kevin and make it nice and easy.” Yes, I want to think about my own experiences, and yes it’s my heart, face and body, but when I’m doing it and I’m between action and cut, I want to feel like I’m walking in someone else’s shoes and I want to lose myself in it.

How do you find roles and movies that have such diverse audiences?

Well it’s not even a question of finding the roles. I just started acting in the ‘70s and now it’s 2015. That’s what it is. It’s not like I’m actively saying, “Let’s do something that speaks to a certain generation.” I don’t think that far ahead. I’m just trying to take a gig and see how it goes.

How do you choose what roles you want to take or which movies you want to explore and learn more about?

It’s never just one criteria. I obviously start with the character first and then you have to say, “What else is there?” How’s the script? How’s the director? Who are the other actors involved, if any? There are so many things. What’s the timing? The actual pulling of the trigger and stepping into the role happens in all kinds of different ways. You always go into it hoping it will be great and that something about the experience will be worthwhile. It’s either the experience itself or the way people are going to react to the movie. It’s a big picture concept, but if you knew what the secret was to choosing successful films, then we’d all make them all the time. It’s a crapshoot, basically.

Are there any roles you passed on in the past that you wish you had taken, looking back?

No. I don’t look back. I’m someone who’s just looking down the road. I don’t have a rearview mirror. I really try to think down the road.

How is the band [Bacon Brothers Band] doing?

We just finished a couple months of touring and it went really great, had a lot of great crowds. We went through the Midwest, through the south, the east coast, just played a couple nights in Vegas. It’s been really good. Our last record came out about a year and a half ago, something like that. And right now we don’t have any plans for a new CD, but you never know.

Were there any specific actors that helped shape you or influence you as an actor?

Oh absolutely. Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Jon Voight, Meryl Streep, Robert Duvall, Anthony Hopkins, on and on.

You seem to have been incredibly fortunate with a long marriage. Do you [and wife Kyra Sedgwick] consult one another on roles and projects?

We always consult each other. That’s a big part of our lives. It’s not just a role, but the timing. Our kids are grown now but we would often have to talk timing, where are we going to be, where we’re going to be living. We have to have a certain amount of face time to keep this thing rolling. So yeah we talk career stuff too. I 100 percent value her advice on my choices. It doesn’t mean every time she says, “Do something,” I do, or don’t do something. I have made some choices that she hasn’t really agreed with and you just have to say okay and go with it. You gotta do it anyway. We talk about everything.

Can you envision a day where you aren’t acting?

Nope. I don’t have any plans of slowing down. I love being an actor.

Are there any other projects or aspects of movie-making that you would like to explore or do in the future?

I haven’t directed in a while and I would like to do that again soon.

What other things do you enjoy doing outside of acting and music?

I like to hike and cook. I enjoy furniture and design, not making it, just looking at it. I’m always kind of trying to spread my interests around and try new things. I do so much traveling for work that it isn’t big on my list but I have done some in the past.