Early work Bacon left home at age 17 to pursue a theater career in New York City, where he appeared in a production at the
Circle in the Square Theater School. "I wanted life, man, the real thing", he later recalled to
Nancy Mills of
Cosmopolitan. "The message I got was 'The arts are it. Business is the devil's work. Art and creative expression are next to godliness.' Combine that with an immense ego and you wind up with an actor." Bacon's debut in the
fraternity comedy ''
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) did not lead to the fame he had sought, and Bacon returned to waiting tables and auditioning for small roles in theater. He briefly worked on the television soap operas Search for Tomorrow (1979) and Guiding Light'' (1980–81) in New York.
1980s In 1980, he appeared in the slasher film
Friday the 13th. Some of his early-stage work included
Getting Out, performed at New York's
Phoenix Theater, and
Flux, at
Second Stage Theatre during their 1981–1982 season. In 1982, he won an
Obie Award for his role in
Forty Deuce, and soon afterward he made his Broadway debut in
Slab Boys, with then-unknowns
Sean Penn and
Val Kilmer. However, it was not until he portrayed Timothy Fenwick that same year in
Barry Levinson's film
Dinercostarring
Steve Guttenberg,
Daniel Stern,
Mickey Rourke,
Tim Daly, and
Ellen Barkinthat he made an indelible impression on film critics and moviegoers alike. Bolstered by the attention garnered by his performance in
Diner, Bacon starred in
Footloose (1984). To prepare for the role, Bacon enrolled at a high school as a transfer student named "Ren McCormick" and studied teenagers before leaving in the middle of the day. Bacon earned strong reviews for
Footloose. Bacon's critical and box office success led to a period of
typecasting in roles similar to the two he portrayed in
Diner and
Footloose, and he had difficulty shaking this on-screen image. For the next several years he chose films that cast him against either type and experienced, by his own estimation, a career slump. After a cameo in
John Hughes's 1987 comedy
Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Bacon starred in John Hughes's 1988 comedy ''
She's Having a Baby'',
1990s In 1990, Bacon had two successful roles. He played a character who saved his town from under-the-earth "graboid" monsters in the comedy/horror film
Tremors, and he portrayed an earnest medical student experimenting with death in
Joel Schumacher's
Flatliners. He performed that year as gay prostitute Willie O'Keefe in
Oliver Stone's
JFK and went on to play a prosecuting attorney in the military courtroom drama
A Few Good Men. Later that year he returned to the theater to play in
Spike Heels, directed by
Michael Greif. Bacon played a trademark dark role once again in
Sleepers (1996). This part starkly contrasted with his appearance in the lighthearted romantic comedy,
Picture Perfect (1997). Bacon again resurrected his oddball mystique that year as a mentally-challenged houseguest in
Digging to China 2000s In 2000, he appeared in
Paul Verhoeven's
Hollow Man. Bacon,
Colin Firth and
Rachel Blanchard depict a
ménage à trois in their film,
Where the Truth Lies. Bacon and director
Atom Egoyan condemned the
MPAA ratings board decision to rate the film "
NC-17" rather than the preferable "R". Bacon commented: "I don't get it, when I see films (that) are extremely violent, extremely objectionable sometimes in terms of the roles that women play, slide by with an R, no problem, because the people happen to have more of their clothes on." That same year, he played the gruff father in the family film
My Dog Skip. In 2003, Bacon acted with
Sean Penn and
Tim Robbins in
Clint Eastwood's movie
Mystic River. He was again acclaimed for a dark starring role playing an offending pedophile on parole in
The Woodsman (2004), for which he was nominated for best actor and received the Independent Spirit Award. In 2005, Bacon was in the comedy film
Beauty Shop with
Queen Latifah. He appeared in the
HBO Films production of
Taking Chance (2009), based on an eponymous story written by Lieutenant Colonel
Michael Strobl, an American
Desert Storm war veteran. The film premiered on HBO on February 21, 2009. Bacon won a Golden Globe Award and a
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie for his role.
2010s in 2015 On July 15, 2010, it was confirmed that Bacon would appear in
Matthew Vaughn's
X-Men: First Class as mutant villain
Sebastian Shaw. The film was released in 2011, the same year as the romantic comedy
Crazy, Stupid, Love, in which Kevin portrayed a co-worker involved in an affair. In March 2012, Bacon was featured in a performance of
Dustin Lance Black's play,
8 – a staged reenactment of the
federal trial that overturned California's
Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage – as Attorney
Charles J. Cooper. The production was held at the
Wilshire Ebell Theatre and broadcast on YouTube to raise money for the
American Foundation for Equal Rights. From 2013 to 2015, Bacon starred as Ryan Hardy in the FOX television series
The Following. In 2013, he won a
Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television for that role. In 2015, he appeared in the crime film
Black Mass, which starred
Johnny Depp. In 2015, he said in a
Huffington Post interview he would like to return to the
Tremors franchise. However, Bacon did not appear in
Tremors 5: Bloodline (2015). He starred in
Patriots Day in 2016, which was about the
2013 Boston Marathon bombing. ==Other ventures==