Kevin Bacon wanted to get away from the spotlight after “Footloose” was released in 1984, but his wife Kyra Sedgwick had other plans.
During a recent episode of the YouTube show, “Mythical Kitchen’s Last Meals,” Bacon admitted that his dream was to be a “lonely” farmer, living on a rural farm with just his dog.
“I think I had gone through the intensity of ‘Footloose,’ and exploding into a kind of national kind of stardom, and then trying to deal with that,” Bacon said. He revealed that it felt like his life went from “zero to 60,” and he was looking for a way to wind down.
At that moment in his life, Bacon was craving some peace of mind.
“I just thought to myself, ‘I’ll just be a guy with a dog and live alone. I don’t need anything. I don’t need anybody,’” he told host Josh Scherer, also known as Mythical Chef Josh.
The Gatlin Brothers’ 2007 song “Chop Wood and Carry Water” came to mind when Bacon was describing his desire for solitude at the time.
“It might sound corny… but I like to be out there, chopping wood.”
Bacon was living in Western Connecticut when he met his now-wife. Sedgwick was not thrilled with Bacon’s desire to be isolated from the rest of the world.
Initially, the pair were living in a “funky, small, rundown farmhouse,” according to Bacon.
“For a while, quite a few years actually, she sort of folded into that, and we kind of became that together,” he said of Sedgwick. “And we lived in this little place, and I chopped the wood, and when we weren’t working, she brought a dog into the mix. So it was us – and [our dogs] Jane and Tybalt.”
Bacon’s fantasy was only attainable for Sedgwick for a couple of years.
“She said, ‘This is horrible. I want to go out to lunch. I want to go to the movies or the theater. I want to shop in the Village,’” Bacon recalled.
Sedgwick, who is a native New Yorker, did not want to raise her children in isolation, which prompted the couple’s “biggest fight we’ve ever had in our lives,” according to Bacon.
Bacon and Sedgwick share Travis, 35, and Sosie, 33.
At the time, Kyra was adamant about transferring her son Travis to a school in Manhattan and renting an apartment for her family to live in.
KEVIN BACON, KYRA SEDGWICK MAKE RARE APPEARANCE WITH THEIR ADULT KIDS
Bacon said at the time, “post-‘Footloose’, pre-‘Tremors,'” their finances weren’t in the best place for that kind of transition.
“It was the greatest thing we ever did. She was so right. Raising kids in Manhattan was the best idea,” Bacon says in hindsight.
The actor added, “We ultimately figured out a way to afford the apartment. I did get work. All these things that I was afraid of not happening, happened – and she was right. You know, right again.”
Bacon and Sedgwick married in 1988 after meeting on the set of “Lemon Sky.” The actor would invite the entire cast to dinner during filming in hopes that Sedgwick would attend, the actress recalled during a 2012 episode of “Conan.”
Sedgwick never attended the dinner, and Bacon moved on to suggesting “The Woodsman” star get a massage at his hotel, and they could grab dinner after – and the rest is history.
Even though the couple decided to raise their kids in Manhattan, they chose to shield their kids from the Hollywood success they fought “tooth and nail” for.
“When it came to promoting my own fame and taking my kids to premieres and making them watch my movies and showing them an article in the paper… we really didn’t do that,” Bacon said. “We really avoided it. I think we really felt like it would be nice for them to have some… we knew how weird this life was.”
LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
He continued, “When you realize that you will always… that there’s always a chance that you’re gonna walk out of the house and somebody is going to know who you are or look at you or have some kind of point of you about you from a piece of work that you’ve done, you start to go, ‘OK, it’s great. This is what I always wanted, but it’s a weird way to live, 99% good, but a little weird.'”
Bacon opted to shield his kids from the harsh realities of fame “because they didn’t choose it.”
“That’s the thing. When it comes to fame, I’ve nobody to blame but myself. It was my thing,” Bacon explained on “Last Meals.” “I’m the one that fought tooth and nail for it. But for them, it’s something that’s thrust upon them.”
“I just felt like, let them figure out their own thing. So that’s the way we parented them. I keep telling them, ‘It had to have been hard for you. Please, tell me. I want to know. Sit with your therapist, it’s OK,'” he added. “You can get mad at me for this life that you were… and they just will not go there. They will not acknowledge that it was anything that was difficult about having one of them.”
Now that his kids are adults, they’re free to make their own choices. One of those has been to star alongside their famous parents in the horror film, “Family Movie.”
“This is a dream,” Bacon told US Weekly.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER
“We just love hanging out with our kids. But the crazy thing is, not all the time, but every once in a while, they like to hang out with us, and so that’s the s— right there because you raise them and a lot of times, it doesn’t translate into an ongoing, lasting, close relationship.”
Bacon told the outlet that he and his “very close” family never take their bond “for granted.”
“We all work on separate things. Travis works, Kyra works separately, I work separately, Sosie’s always working. Just the idea [of being] able to work together is gold.”
