Kevin Bacon’s biography, fact, career, awards, net worth & life story

Kevin Norwood Bacon is an American actor who has an estimated net worth of $45 million. This amount is the result of combining his fortune with the one owned by his wife, the actress Kyra Sedgwick. The couple lost part of their savings in the Ponzi scheme of infamous swindler Bernard Madoff. The losses suffered were supposedly in the tens of millions of dollars, potentially as high as $40 million.

Bacon, who also worked as a film director and film executive producer, is best known for his acting in Apollo 13 (1995), Mystic River (2003), X-Men: First Class (2011), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), and Black Mass (2015). He earned $4 million for his performance in Black Mass, $6 million for Crazy, Stupid, Love, $3 million for Mystic River, $1 million for Wild Things (1998), $2.5 million for Sleepers (1996), $650,000 for A Few Good Men (1992), $500,000 for Tremors (1990), $500,000 for She’s Having a Baby (1988), and $1 million for Footloose (1984). Bacon has shown a wide acting range over his career, taking both friendly and obscure roles throughout the years. He played in 55 films, totaling almost $3 billion in the worldwide box office. Outside of cinema, Bacon starred in the Fox series The Following (2013–2015), earning $175,000 per episode. The series had three seasons of 15 episodes each, so he profited a total of $7,875,000 for that work. In his early years as an actor, he also performed in the theater. Bacon won a Golden Globe Award because of his role in the HBO original movie Taking Chance (2009).

Bacon was born on July 8, 1958 in Philadelphia. He is the youngest of six children. His mother, Ruth Hilda Holmes, was an elementary school teacher, and his father, Edmund Norwood Bacon, was an architect who served as executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. In 1975, at age 16, Bacon won a state-funded scholarship and attended a five-week arts program in which he studied theater at Bucknell University.  Next year, he moved to pursue a theater career in New York City, and in 1978 debuted on film in National Lampoon’s Animal House. Bacon kept playing in theater, and in 1982 had his Broadway debut in Slab Boys along with then-unknown, Sean Penn. By that time, he already had performed in other movies, but it wasn’t until he took part in Diner (1982) that came into the consideration of both critics and moviegoers. Due to the attention garnered with Diner, Bacon starred in Footloose (1984), which had a revenue of $80 million.

After acting in a few films with little success, Bacon played in Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) and had a main role in the She’s Having a Baby (1988). In 1990, he had two successful performances. Bacon played a character who saved his town from under-the-earth monsters in the comedy/horror film Tremors, and had the lead role as a medical student experimenting with death in Flatliners. The following year, he starred in He Said, She Said and performed as a gay prostitute in Oliver Stone’s JFK, which grossed $205 million at the box office. In 1992, he acted as a prosecuting attorney in the military courtroom drama A Few Good Men, which had a revenue of $236 million. Two years after that, Bacon featured in The Air Up There and received a Golden Globe nomination for his role in The River Wild. In 1995, he took part in Murder in the First, Balto, and the blockbuster hit Apollo 13, which grossed $335 million at the box office. Bacon then played a trademark dark role in Sleepers (1996), which contrasted with his appearance in the romantic comedy Picture Perfect (1997).

The actor debuted as a Director with the film Losing Chase (1996), which was nominated for three Golden Globe and won one, awarded to Helen Mirren under the category “Best Actress in Miniseries or Television Film”. Bacon later served as Executive Producer and played in Wild Things (1998). In 1999, he starred in Stir of Echoes. The following year, Bacon performed in My Dog Skip and Hollow Man. Three years after that, he featured in In the Cut and with Sean Penn in Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River. In 2005, he directed his second film, Loverboy, which also executive produced. During the remaining 2000s stand out his appearances in Beauty Shop (2005), Death Sentence (2007), Frost/Nixon (2008), and Taking Chance (2009). Bacon played in two major movies in 2011, X-Men: First Class, with ticket sales for $355 million, and Crazy, Stupid, Love. Thereafter, he took part in R.I.P.D. (2013), Black Mass (2015), Patriots Day (2016), and The Darkness (2016). In 2019, Bacon starred in the first season of the crime series City on a Hill. He later executive produced and played a lead role in You Should Have Left (2020), which is his last film. As of April 2021, the second season of City on a Hill is on air.

Bacon is married to Kyra Sedgwick since 1988. They have two children, Travis (1989) and Sosie Ruth (1992). In 2012, the couple bought a house in Los Angeles for $2.5 million, though currently live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Bacon was previously in a five-year relationship with actress Tracy Pollan in the 1980s.

Sources: Celebrity Net Worth, The Richest, The Numbers, The Numbers (2), The Numbers (3), The Numbers (4), IMDB, The Numbers (5), The Numbers (6), The Numbers (7), TV Guide, People Pill, TV Guide (2), Daily Mail.