Kevin Bacon Talks T-Mobile Partnership, Career

Kevin Bacon / T-Mobile

T-Mobile

T-Mobile recently tapped legendary actor Kevin Bacon to help launch their SuperMobile campaign. SuperMobile is a business phone plan combining intelligent performance, built-in security and innovative satellite coverage.

For Bacon, who’s constantly on the go with plenty of work to keep up with, the partnership made perfect sense.

“I know the director (of the T-Mobile commercial) Brian Klugman, but I also find that just because of my lifestyle, I am just always doing work on the road,” Bacon, who also appreciates the additional security that comes with SuperMobile, told Forbes. “It’s just something that is just part of who I am. My wife (Kyra Sedgwick) and I always joked that we always have a suitcase packed. We love our home life, we like the times that we get to stay at home, but we always keep a suitcase packed.

“So, this just seems to make sense. A good opportunity to talk about trying to run your business and trying to stay on top of your business from a mobile device. And that’s exactly what I do. A good example is, I play in a band and we’ve been on the road a lot. And (Kyra and I co-directed a movie, Family Movie). And so the other day I we were on our way to a show and I had a long drive, and I spent two days on my device in the editing room, basically working on the cut of the movie from my device in the car. It’s just super important.”

The 67-year old actor not only has 111 IMDB acting credits, but has been in some of the most well-received films of all time, including A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, JFK, Animal House, and Footloose to name a few. Despite an unrivaled body of work, Kevin doesn’t spend much time reflecting on it, his focus is with what’s next.

“I still don’t have much of rear view mirror. When I say goodbye to a project, I feel like I put that (one) behind me, and I’m looking for the next one, looking down the road,” Bacon said. “I think it’s a feeling that people think of as insane, but, there’s been so many times that I’ve been out of work, I’ve been through a lot of career highs and lows.

“And when you’re a self-supporting, creative person, you don’t really ever know where the next job is going to come from. The closest thing that I’ve ever had to job security was on a television series, only because you know that you’re going to do a few episodes. But even those have been canceled right out from under me.

“So, to me, I just don’t look back and say, ‘Ah, well, I can sort of take take my foot off the gas, because I was in Apollo 13 or something. I just don’t I don’t think that way.

“I think sometimes what happens is when I’m put into a situation, which happens every once in a while, where people are either doing an interview or I’m at some kind of a career retrospective or something like that. Then I go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right. I was pretty good in (that movie).’ But it’s not like I wake up every day and then the posters are all over my bedroom. I hope that the best movie on this isn’t happened yet.”

One of Kevin’s most recent projects was Netflix’s thriller series Sirens, also starring Supergirl actress Milly Alcock. Alcock, who rose to fame with HBO’s House of the Dragon before being cast by James Gunn as DC Studios’ Supergirl, made an impression on Bacon working together in Sirens. Alcock found out she would be the new Supergirl shortly before production on Sirens.

“Oh, I love Milly. I thought she was absolutely fantastic. She’s very immediate,” Kevin said. “It’s like, when you’re there, she looks at you, she hears you, she reacts off what you’re doing.

“Some people, especially in movies, or in television, you get the impression that they’ve already decided what their performance is and you don’t even need to be there. They’re done. But I think really great actors are in the ring with you. You feel that the two of you are involved in playing machine. And and so that gives it a kind of an immediacy. And and I really liked it.

“I really appreciated working with her. She’s also super professional. You know, the ladies in that show had all the heavy lifting to do and she was always on time, prepared, just bringing it. You look at that show and scene after scene, her and Julie (Julianne Moore), they just brought it. I was super impressed with all three of them (including Meghann Fahy).”

While working on Sirens, Bacon and Alcock sent a photo of themselves together to inform Gunn, Co-Chairman and CEO of DC Studios, that they were working together. Kevin worked with Gunn for 2022’s Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, making a hilarious and memorable cameo as himself.

With projects like Sirens, Bacon has adapted to working with streamers, but the theatrical experience continues to be sacred to him.

“I absolutely adore the theatrical experience. It’s not the same. It can’t tell me that it’s the same,” Kevin said. “You go go out, you make an investment. You share the experience with a group of people. It’s just, it’s cooler. And what’s really important about it to me, is that you (don’t) have two screens.

“I’m not someone who’s, like, ‘I never look at my phone in the course of the day or whatever.’ I’m good with with all that technology. I think there’s a lot of it that’s super, super helpful in what we were talking about, being able to do business and create stuff.

“But I really am old school when it comes to sitting down at a movie theater and eating popcorn and I go to movies a lot. I think there’s some depressing statistic about the amount of movies that people go to in a year these days. It’s like two or something like that. And the pandemic didn’t help.

“But I go to a movie, I’d say, probably almost weekly. And I’ll go in the afternoon by myself, no problem. I will also say that from my standpoint, I love that there is a possibility to do work on streaming. I think that it’s opened up a lot of great content. There’s a lot of great stuff that can have a life there.

“And sometimes, you go, ‘Well, if I came out there with this movie, how many eyeballs would I get on it?’ And if you could find a home on streaming, you can really put it out there for people to see it, and that’s really what we’re doing. We’re just trying to share whatever we’ve created, with as many eyeballs as possible. I think there’s pluses and minuses.”

The Philadelphia native takes pride in playing characters from all walks of life. That’s why as many times as he’s been the hero we root for, he’s also been the villain that makes us cringe or double-check the locks on our doors.

“To me, to only embrace one idea would be like saying, ‘I only want to play rich guys, or I only want to play cops.’ So, the idea that I can only be seen as heroic is so empathetical to what it means to be an actor, to me, it may not be for other people, but for me, the whole point of becoming in actor was to be able to walk in a lot of different people’s shoes,” Bacon said.

“And so, you know, if you say, I don’t like to be the bad guy, then you’re cutting off a whole bunch of people’s shoes you might get a chance to walk in.

“Honestly, when I take on a part, it’s clear that, some are villains, and maybe I get tired of it, but only to the extent that I feel like if the man himself is too similar to something that I’ve just done. Not the issue of whether they’re doing good things or bad things.

“It’s more like, I don’t even know how you these describe the character in Sirens, but Sirens came along, and I go, ‘Oh, okay, so I just finished doing The Bondsman and playing a working class, country musician, ex-musician, from a small town in Appalachia, who’s rough and tumble and all that stuff, he’s fighting demons, and now I get a chance to a billionaire. And I go, ‘Oh, oh, that’s cool,’ because I just finished doing the complete opposite of a billionaire, and now I get a chance to do that. So it’s more about the variety than it’s bad guys versus good guys.”

When asked about his most recently-released project, The Toxic Avenger, Bacon was thrilled to discuss he experience with and opinion of the reboot.

“Oh, yeah, it’s wild, it’s this totally wild ride,” Kevin said with a laugh. “(Writer and director) Macon Blair created this, took on a pretty big challenge to take on a franchise, Troma, basically, or a whole genre, more than just a franchise, and have a new kind of spin on Toxic Avenger and I thought he did a great job and the cast is fantastic and I love that part.

“And the movie is bloody and hilarious, and I think it delivers for the original classic Toxic Avenger fans, and also for people that have no idea about the the original movie.”