Having broken through off Broadway with Sean Penn and Val Kilmer, it’s no surprise that the actor has spent 35 years striving to put being a teen idol behind him. ‘I’m drawn to dark things,’ he says
Alarm bells would ring for most couples if one partner suggested marriage as the perfect subject for a horror movie. Kevin Bacon does not seem perturbed, though, that his latest film, You Should Have Left, was inspired by just such an idea that his wife, the actor Kyra Sedgwick, came up with.
“I’m drawn to dark things,” he says down the phone from their farm in Connecticut. “On some level, it’s therapeutic. I have a marriage that works and I didn’t have a tremendous amount of trauma as a child and yet I feel all human beings have darkness in their souls. Fear and anger and doubt live within us. Part of what I like about my job is tapping into those demons. I became an actor because I wanted to explore all sides of the human condition. Being heroic or handsome or winning the big game – I couldn’t care less about those things! But to go into the darker corners of a man’s psyche is an interesting thing to do.”
