The Bacon brothers: family album

Acting fame aside, Kevin Bacon - and his brother - want to be taken seriously as musicians. Stephen Dalton reports.

Kevin Bacon, right, and his brother, Michael, have released their sixth album as part of The Bacon Brothers band, titled New Year's Day.

Quick quiz: name 10 Hollywood actors with part-time rock careers. Easy: Russell Crowe, Juliette Lewis, Jack Black, Keanu Reeves, Steven Seagal, Johnny Depp... the list goes on forever. Now, a much tougher question: name five good rock bands featuring movie stars. Four? Three? Two? In fairness, Kevin Bacon does a better job than most as the husky-voiced frontman of the Bacon Brothers, the rootsy rock'n'soul group he founded with his older brother Michael 15 years ago.

In London to launch the band's sixth album, New Year's Day, the lanky 51-year-old co-star of such modern movie classics as Diner, JFK and Apollo 13 is initially flinty and wary, perhaps already steeling himself for the inevitable queries about actors who dabble in music. Crucially, the Bacon Brothers are more of a solid professional operation than a rich man's hobby. Their new album is a polished and eclectic affair, as it should be, since Michael has been an award-winning soundtrack composer for three decades.

In between Kevin's prolific filming schedules, the full five-piece band manages to play about 50 shows a year around the US. But, as Bacon complains, his movie-star baggage still weighs heavily. Not many radio stations or reviewers will take his musical sideline seriously. "It's a tough nut to crack," he sighs. "A lot of people would think if Kevin Bacon wants a record deal he's going to get one but there is very little precedent of that being a successful project.

"Look at the other actors who've given it a shot. We knew that was going to be the deal but the one thing we didn't do was try and somehow cash in on it." Bacon has always found film fame to be a double-edged sword. Even as he enjoyed his first big breakthrough role as the boyish hero of the 1984 teen musical Footloose, which transformed him into a bona fide pin-up pop star, he agonised about his thwarted ambitions to become a serious actor.

"It was a blessing and a curse," he recalls. "It was fantastic but all of a sudden, here I was, David Cassidy. I was so resistant to that idea." Of course, Bacon later went on to prove his versatility as a serious actor. His 30-year career has included starring roles, from the pulpy sci-fi of Tremors and Hollow Man to the sombre crime drama The Woodsman. But unlike many of his Hollywood peers, he also seems comfortable immersing himself in character parts, many of them unsympathetic or plain evil. From A Few Good Men to Frost/Nixon, Sleepers to Mystic River, he has played dozens of crooked and contemptible figures .

"You are either a personality or an actor," he shrugs. "You've got to make a choice. There's nothing I won't do. I'm out there to play different kinds of parts, different people. They can't all be lovers or heroes. I don't ever set out to play somebody as sympathetic. To me that is an unplayable action." For Bacon, fame runs in the family. The youngest of six children, he was born into a prominent Philadelphia family in July 1958. His mother, Ruth Hilda Holmes, was a New York socialite turned teacher and social activist. His father Edmund was a celebrated architect who became the city's chief planner, appearing on the covers of both Time and Life magazines for his groundbreaking work in urban regeneration.

Tall, handsome and fiercely image-conscious, Edmund Bacon remained an esteemed public figure and author right up to his death in 2005. It may be playing armchair psychologist to suggest that the actor grew up in competition with such a domineering father, but he readily agrees. "For me, 100 per cent," Bacon nods. "I was going to beat him if it took every ounce of my strength and willpower, to be more famous than him. Maybe I only became conscious of that in my twenties or early thirties, but in a lot of ways I'm deeply grateful to him for that, because that helped me get what I've got. I don't know if domineering is quite the word, but my father was the biggest personality in the room, in every room, at any time. So a big part of what drove me was to change that dynamic."

In terms of global recognition, Bacon certainly won the fame game against his father. But celebrity brought some unwelcome side effects, including the notorious Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, which links the prolific actor to any other co-star in six moves or less. Invented by bored Pennsylvania College students, this light-hearted game initially angered Bacon. "I kind of saw it as a joke at my expense," he admits. But he eventually relaxed and joined in the fun. "I'm still trying to figure out if there are any ways to make money off it," he laughs. In 2007, Bacon even launched his own online charity donation website, SixDegrees.org.

Strangely, in a three-decade career which includes dozens of well-reviewed performances, Bacon has never once been even nominated for an Oscar. Of course, this lack of recognition may simply be random misfortune, but the actor's decision to remain based in New York may also have affected his chances, coupled to his apparent hostility to Hollywood in interviews. Ironically, Bacon actually spends half the year in Los Angeles because his actress wife Kyra Sedgwick shoots her television series there, The Closer. "There was a time in my life that, maybe as a way to justify the fact that I was staying in New York, I kind of had this LA-bashing sentiment," Bacon admits.

"But the truth is I really like it now. I've got very close friends there. There are times when I go out there and I realise this really is my community. I tell kids now that if they want to be actors, they need to get to LA. Probably for both my wife and me, it would be a much better career decision. It's just practical, it's a company town, but that's not where we wanted to raise our kids." Even with his current "bicoastal" lifestyle, Bacon remains physically and emotionally rooted in Manhattan's Upper West Side. He describes the city as a constant source of creative stimulation, insisting he can ride the subway and walk the streets without attracting attention.

"It's not that people don't recognise you, it's the way they react to you," he explains. "It's very different in New York than the rest of the world, unless you get to midtown because it's all tourists there." And yet, without that public recognition factor, Bacon admits he would feel oddly bereft. Recently, as an experiment, he went out shopping behind a heavy disguise. "I haven't told a lot of people this, but I had a disguise made by a special effects make-up artist," Bacon laughs. "I haven't used it a lot, but one time I used it, I walked through a busy shopping mall in LA, bought something, spent some time there, and it really worked. And frankly, I didn't like it! I realised what it's like when people just see through you. The person behind the counter wasn't really that nice... I was like: this sucks! Ha!"

Bacon smiles sheepishly at this confession of his own fragile, needy ego. That's the trouble with the fame monster: it may be destructive but it sure is addictive. Perhaps, to borrow a celebrated Oscar Wilde quote, the only thing worse than being famous is not being famous? "Oh yeah," Bacon nods. "If it really went away, it would be hard for me to live without it."