Kevin Bacon Slips Back into The Closer's Director's Chair

It's a year of milestones for Kevin Bacon: The actor turned 50 (!) on July 8, he celebrates his 20^th wedding anniversary with Kyra Sedgwick in September, and it's been 30 years since the release of his first movie, Animal House. Tonight, he sits in the director's chair for a third time on Sedgwick's hit series The Closer (Mondays at 9 pm/ET, TNT).

TV Guide: Did you handpick this episode?
Kevin Bacon: It doesn't really work that way, but I definitely lucked out 'cause I got a really interesting and cool script. It's a story that revolves around Sanchez and the murder of his brother. Raymond Cruz did a fantastic job — showed colors that I knew he had in him, but he still surprised me.
TV Guide: What about Brenda?
Bacon: [Sanchez] has sort of a vigilante streak to him [and] when he starts to exhibit that, she's in a position of reining him in. There are some great scenes between the two of them.

TV Guide: What's up with Brenda and Fritz?
Bacon: In this episode, there's not a lot of stuff between the two of them, but I can tell you that there's some great stuff coming [Laughs]. I can't say what it is, but there's a lot of interesting dynamics to their relationship that continue to unfold for the rest of the season.

TV Guide: How well does Kyra take directions from you?
Bacon: Kyra is like any good actor — and all the actors on the show — hungry for direction and always extremely willing to try and alter or adjust her performance based on something I see. This comes up a lot, "So you get to direct your wife, so you get to order her around." [Laughs] But that's not really what directing is, you know, that's sort of a misconception. I look at it more as I'm in a position to encourage actors to do their best work and to guide them toward delivering what I know they can and will. The thing about Kyra is she knows this character so well, she's so well-prepared and has made pretty strong decisions about how she's going to play something, and rarely, honestly do I step in and say, "That's just not right." Mostly, I'm just the monkey who says "action" and "cut."

TV Guide: Would you ever consider taking an acting part on the show?
Bacon: I think it would be a mistake. It would really take people out of the show. I think that would be jump-the-shark time.

TV Guide: Will you be accompanying Kyra to the Emmys?
Bacon: If she'll have me. I'm so proud of her, and it's the only way I get to go to an awards show, if I'm holding her train. [Laughs]

TV Guide: Is doing more television, either in front or behind the camera, something you're interested in?
Bacon: I'm interested in being behind the camera. In front of the camera… I don't have it in me to play the same part for that long. I so admire people that can do it — in Kyra's case, four years to get into a character's shoes. I'm like too flaky to do that. [Laughs]. I got to go from job to job to job — that's just the way I am. That being said, never say never.

TV Guide: Where will we see you acting next?
Bacon: I've got a movie coming out that I have a small part in, which is called Frost/Nixon. Ron Howard directed and I haven't worked with [him] since Apollo 13. It's about the [1977] meeting between David Frost and Richard Nixon. And I have a film that I did for HBO called Taking Chance, which comes out sometime in early '09.
 
TV Guide: You're going to be married for 20 years in September. Any suggestions for how to make a marriage work?
Bacon: My only suggestion is if you're looking for suggestions on how to make a marriage work don't ask a movie star.

TV Guide: Twenty years, that's kind of a rarity in Hollywood….
Bacon: No one has ever proven to me that Hollywood marriages have a shorter shelf life than any other kind of marriage. I think that Hollywood marriages are the one you hear about when they hit the skids, but marriage is tough.

TV Guide: Any celebratory plans?
Bacon: We're going to have a big party and we just want to dance. That's our thing.
 
TV Guide: Animal House — care to reflect?
Bacon: Having John Belushi spit mashed potatoes on me — a pretty wild time. And the idea that this is what my career would be! But I loved it. Getting whacked on the ass, saying "Thank you sir, may I have another"—John Landis did way too many takes of that.
TV Guide: Any plans for a new Bacon Brothers CD?
Bacon: It's coming out probably September or October. I'm really happy with it. Maybe I always feel this, but I feel it's the best yet — I'm thrilled with it.
TV Guide: Do you enjoy the music as much as the acting?
Bacon: You look at all these things I have going between acting, producing, trying to direct and the band, and you think, "How am I going to fit this all in?" It seems a little overwhelming, but once we're making music, it's just something that's important to me. I think if I didn't do it, it would be eating me up. If you have some creative impulse and you don't really follow it, it can lead to a lot of disappointment or frustration in your life. I started writing songs before I ever took an acting class, so to never get a chance to play them would be really hard for me.

TV Guide: And we can't talk to Kevin Bacon without mentioning the "six degrees" thing….
Bacon: Microsoft was actually able to prove the "six degrees" theory — that we're actually all connected by 6.6 degrees. It's a funny thing that's been dogging me for all these years, and I wanted to do something of a charitable nature and I was trying to think of something that I was specifically branded with. If you take me out of the equation — lose the Kevin Bacon part — and just think about people being connected by six degrees… I just found that to be a totally beautiful notion. So we launched sixdegrees.org as a way for people to connect with other people about things that they care about and also as a way to find out how to donate or to volunteer to charity. We're way over $2 million now and still kind of moving forward.

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